News design is an approach to the publication of news media that is organized around the tasks of readers, not of newsmakers. News design is the creative process of organizing content on a news page, often based around a theme or an agenda, and then according to various graphical and editorial guidelines, arranging newsworthy material in a manner that enhances its readability and clarity. While graphical considerations are usually a matter of practicality, editorial considerations tend to be a matter of tone, style, and economy.
The most common method by which this is done is to create a layout by which the preprinted newsboards can be easily organized, usually through the use of a grid system or a pie chart. News designers use a variety of different techniques to organize the information for such layouts. In some newspapers, for example, a large format advertisement is divided into several different blocks. Newsprint designers can also arrange text within a single block and assign different sizes and margins to the blocks, depending on the clarity and readability of the block and the formatting of the rest of the article.
The principle of the visual news board is based on the same principles that govern magazine and book design. A newspaper’s virtual image space is much smaller than its real space, and therefore it must be designed much more flexibly, taking into consideration the visual aspects of the web and the print medium. Newsroom designers are forced to work within a specified budget, and are sometimes under tremendous time pressure to meet deadlines. This is why many editors prefer to stick with purely print news, even though it is not exactly traditional newspaper writing.