So far we have spoken about the individual components that go into and make up a layout. We now have to look at how we bring these together. And here we will first speak about some concepts that we have talked about throughout this year. These apply to every imaginable graphic design project, of course, but become especially relevant in editorial design. 

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• Alignment: I am not going to go on about this at any great length now since we have been talking about this a lot, all the way back from the start of last semester. You will be doing your project in InDesign which will calculate the columns and give you the grid while you are setting up the project. It is quite needless to say how important vertical alignment is when it comes to creating a system that is based upon columns which are vertical objects.
  
  What is important to consider in addition to this default vertical alignment is horizontal alignment. It is a good idea to have certain elements on the page also align on a horizontal axis. Now, this is something that will change from page to page. In other words, each page spread can have its own horizontal alignment axis, however you are very unlikely to be able to repeat this on another page since the contents of the different pages will be different. One page will have more text, one less. One page will have lots of images, the other won't. 
  
  The first image in the gallery above is from a project by Buse Haberal and it is an example to horizontal alignment in which the cropped bottom of the chimpanzee image on the left aligns with the body text on the right hand page.
   

• Clustering: Again, this is something we have previously talked about in classes but it is something that becomes very important in layout design. And it is also something that works together with space, which is the next bullet point. So, you should really read these two together. The way we humans best perceive visual material is when things that belong together are placed near one another, and we understand what we see even better if these things that are placed close to one another also group themselves around a central object that is made more prominent through it central placement. When all the elements on a page are more or less the same size and are placed in equal distances and it becomes very hard for us to figure out what to look at first. We lose direction and we lose interest very quickly. In order for clusterings to work best ideally we also need empty space around them, especially if there is more than one cluster on a page. This empty space we call negative and more about that in a minute. 
  
  Clusterings exist in almost all of the examples that I am giving you on this page. In fact, looking at them again now I cannot find even one where clusters have not been used  - more so in some than others, but always there. Which is to be expected, of course. You will see in all of them that there are groupings of text pieces, together with images, and sometimes shapes. And you will see that in all of them there is enough empty space left between these clusters to allow them to become visible as distinct visual entities. 
  
  For the purposes of this section I have added the "Japan" page designed by Mine Gündüz 2 years ago which is the second image in the gallery. She has 2 clusters on this double page, one on the left in which the headline has been placed inside the image with a dropout box. Mine has done something that is quite interesting here: She has created a subhead out of a spot which is the quote on the right of the image. And then we have the starting paragraph of the body text below the picture as well. This first cluster is separated by quite a bit of empty space that runs across the page gutter from the second cluster where the rest of the body text is placed underneath a photograph. This double clustering, both of which are made out of different sized pieces that are placed close to each other around an image, divides the content into two parts which makes it much easier for our eyes to perceive it - and also to want to read it. Had everything been written as one long piece of body text with a headline above it and two equal sized pictures next to it we would probably be far less likely to become interested in what is here. 
   

• Space: In order for clustering to work really well, clusters will need to be separated from one another with empty space left in-between them. Again, you will see that there is quite a bit of empty on almost all, if not indeed all, examples that I am giving on this page. Emir Darman's "Nike" page however makes such dramatic usage of empty space (it could be even be said that his entire design is built around empty space) that I decided to make it the special example for a discussion of space in design by putting it in the gallery above. 
  
  In the design fields we call empty space "negative space". What this means is that the space is empty of informational content. Not that it is actually completely empty (as is the case with Emir's layout) but that it is empty of information. So, in order to understand this idea of "empty of information" space let us look at the 4th layout in the gallery which is by Dilara Doğan and is called "Büşra Develi". Here Dilara is using a full page photograph as a background. Yes, the photo is full page, we do not see any of the actual white page background. But the thing is that quite a bit of the photo is actually negative space because it is empty of information. In fact almost the whole right hand side of this photo is "empty". Yes, we sort of see a curtain. Yes, we sort of see the back of the sofa. And yes, we see that she is sitting in a pink room. These, do not give us any information when looked at by themselves however. Unless we have the portrait on the left side that puts everything in context what we see on the right hand side would be quite meaningless. It would not hold any information. And that is what negative space is. Again, it is space that is empty of information. Not space that is actually really empty. Space that contains information on the other hand (such as text obviously, but also clearly recognizable, meaningful visual material - such as the part that is Büşra Hanım's portrait in the full picture above, or Emir's sneakers) is called positive space. 
  
  Now, the trick to good design is very often in how much negative space you actually have available to you. Which will, of course, depend on the amount of content that you have to put on a page. On a website it could be said that this is up to you - you can make your pages as long as you like and add plenty of space in between clusters of content. Or you can divide content into sub-pages. This is theoretically correct however in practicality it hardly ever works that way since the longer a page gets the less likely people are to scroll down and too many clicks are considered to be a bad thing on a website. But, theoretically, let us say that this is correct for online design. That you can have as much negative space as you want.
  
  This freedom disappears completely when you get to the print medium where there is such a thing as the price of paper. The less paper a designer the more his bosses will like him or her. So, in the real world out there, when you start to design print medium brochures, catalogs, reports and indeed magazines, there will be a shortage of negative space. However, since you are not yet out in the real world, as students you are free to use as much negative space as you want. And the unvarying motto here is - the more the better. If you can get a page to be 50 negative / 50 positive you are in OK shape. Not great, but OK. If you can get this ratio to 60 negative / 40 positive much better. And if you can get it to 70 / 30 you are basically flying like Emir is doing above. 
  
  So, do not try to cram stuff into your pages. Give them space to breathe, for clusters to be able to separate so that things become clearly perceptible to the viewer. Always remember, the more negative space you have the more your positive space gets accentuated. We need the "S" between the sound to hear the music. And very much the same principle applies here as well.
   

• Hierarchy: When we talk about hierarchies in editorial design we mainly talk about the text, and images become a secondary element, almost an aid to that.
  
  There are several ways of achieving a hierarchy on a page. One is to do what Zuhal Uz did, which is to arrange the text elements in the order in which they are meant to be read which you can see in the 4th image in the gallery above called "Aletli Dalış": It is a very good example of setting up a textual hierarchy on a page in which headline, subhead and body text are arranged one below the other in a good cluster that is framed by the 2 images. The caption, which is the last element of the hierarchy is then placed to the side which gives it a distinctness through separation: It belongs to the hierarchy and yet it is also distinct from it.
  
  But things do not have to be arranged one below the other in a reading order to achieve hierarchy. There are other ways of doing it, in which clusters, placements and negative space become very important. And equally important in these hierarchies are typographic weights and usage of color and grey tones. A good example to these is Fatma Betül Avcı's contents page of the magazine called "Kümülüs" which is the 6th image in this gallery. This is a very complex page that holds several sub-hierarchies and still works. So, let us look at what she did:
  
  She placed the name of the magazine "kümülüs" at the vertical center of the page. The central part of a page when you look at it vertically is always the most prominent area of the page. So, the word "kümülüs" although it is much smaller than the big "içindekiler" at the top gains hierarchical advantage because of its placement. So, the placement of an element (as well as the placement of what is around it) is the most important part of establishing hierarchy. In addition that the word "kümülüs" is also written in a bold typeface which also increases its prominence. however, if you look at the words "Anouar Brahem" you can see that these are written in the same bold weight. And yet we see "kümülüs" first and the "Anouar Brahem" second. Another reason that we see "kümülüs" first is also the fact that a lot of other elements are grouped around it, like children hanging on to a parent almost. This central position where other elements show dependency on the central element is yet another very important tactic to achieve hierarchy. The picture hugs it from above, the contents list from below. And then, in order, once we see that "kümülüs" is number 1 we go to the other elements. Here, since it is very largely written, and also has a color (a very instance of colored text actually working) we can see that "içindekiler" is second and then the rest follow. And this rest has sub-hierarchies made out of clusters: The two features "Oleg Dou" and "Budapeşte oteli" with their numbers are one cluster, the editor's letter is adjacent to that and both of these as well as "Anouar Brahem" and its number surround an image which then becomes the "anchor" of this cluster. 
  
  So, to sum up - for hierarchies, placement first, clustering around the number 1 second. And you may need to create additional clusters that have anchors that hold things together as well. 

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