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Newsletter Printing – Page Pyramids 1st July 2010

Page Pyramids: How Readers Eyes Work With Your Page

Understanding how the human eye interacts with your newsletter page can also help you make layout decisions.  Readers look at your newsletter in three different stages:

1. when it’s folded or flat in the mailing stack
2. when it unfolded
3. when it’s opened to the inside pages

When the newsletter is folded and in the mailing stack, readers first look at their name on the address label to make sure the newsletter was sent to the right person.  Then they glance to the return address area.  Next, they unfold the newsletter and look at either the front of back page.

On these pages, readers look at photos or illustrations first, unless they are small.  In the absence of photographs, readers’ eyes are attracted by the largest, most dominant element on the page.  Then they move to the second most dominant, then to the third, and so on.  On a page of all text, readers’ eyes usually move from the upper left to the lower right corner of the page in a “Z” pattern.

Note that only the first and last pages are seen by themselves.  Other pages are usually seen as two-page spreads.  On two-page spreads in magazines (most eye movement research has been conducted using magazines), the readers’ eye goes first to the right-hand page.  Once readers have glanced at the right-hand page, their eyes go to the left-hand page.  Both pages are read following the “Z” pattern.

The “Z” pattern assumes that the elements on both pages are of equal interest.  A key word in a headline or an interesting photograph can draw the readers’ eyes to the left or to the bottom of the page.

As the editor, your job is to encourage readers to at least skim all the elements of the newsletter.  Armed with better knowledge of eye movement, investigate how you can use the layout to guide your readers through each of the NEWS levels – name, enactment, written words and selling.

Peter Harrison is Joint Managing Director of The Printing House Ltd, and Print Buying Direct of Crewe, Cheshire, UK.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, July 1st, 2010 at 7:19 am and is filed under Banners, Business Stationery, Calendars, Christmas Cards, Leaflets and Brochures, News, Newsletters, Postcards. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.