Selling above the fold

This front page is a fine-designed machine. Except for one thing. Can you spot it?

There is nothing exciting to compel readers to pick up the paper. Maybe the centerpiece is a clean design. Maybe. But the art head falls below the fold, so potential readers won't see it. Do you know what they will do instead? They will continue on to the laundromat, woefully uninformed of the political scandal currently wreaking havoc on Capitol Hill. What gossip will they be able to trade while not mixing their reds with their whites? None. And without a conversation opener, maybe they will never strike one up with the tall, handsome stranger with the dark eyes and chiseled jaw. And maybe then they will never marry and die alone surrounded by empty bottles of wine and cats. Or, even worse, maybe they'll pick up the competition.

So what do I mean by the fold? The fold is that crease in the middle of the newspaper when its folded in half to fit in the newsstand. Designers must always remember to keep the fold in mind when they're designing the front page. (For those who happen to be an inside page designer, the fold still matters, since it's still what readers read first, but it doesn't matter as much because by the time they get to that page, the paper is already open and the fold is almost irrelevant. Lucky SOBs.)

Of course, with the majority of the paper (and eventually all of it) transferring to the Web, this is mostly a moot point. And an excuse to show off the Greensboro News and Record's front page.