{"id":546,"date":"2024-02-24T02:42:14","date_gmt":"2024-02-24T07:42:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/johnzhu.com\/blog\/?p=546"},"modified":"2025-05-28T05:31:52","modified_gmt":"2025-05-28T05:31:52","slug":"two-pages-three-kingdoms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnzhu.com\/blog\/2024\/02\/24\/two-pages-three-kingdoms\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Pages, Three Kingdoms"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I’ve designed content for a lot of different formats and mediums, both print and digital, but nothing quite compares with the special appeal of a newspaper spread. Sure, space is essentially infinite on a webpage, but a newspaper spread’s canvas somehow feels larger and yet at the same time more contained and digestible. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I’m designing a newspaper spread, that large canvas is mentally broken down into a number of regions and micro-regions. Within each of those smaller areas, there are space limitations that compel you to design and edit tightly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Creating a newspaper spread, therefore, is a series of balancing acts as you negotiate the limitations of each area of the spread, and all those regions and all those decisions come together to (hopefully) form a cohesive whole. It’s Gestalt at its finest. If you do it right, the end result is a product that offers substance, visual appeal, and just the right amount of information for a pleasant reading experience, where every design choice is concise and deliberate and not an extra unnecessary word is added and not a single pica is wasted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I haven’t had the opportunity to design newspaper spreads in my primary job in a long time. To scratch that itch, I recently created a spread on a subject I know well — the classic Chinese novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms<\/em>, which was the subject that launched my now almost decade-long foray into podcasting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Two-page<\/a><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Scratching an itch and getting back to designing for one of my favorite formats. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":783,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-design","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnzhu.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/ROTK-spread-featured.jpg?fit=2000%2C1077&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnzhu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnzhu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnzhu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnzhu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnzhu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=546"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/johnzhu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":893,"href":"https:\/\/johnzhu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546\/revisions\/893"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnzhu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnzhu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnzhu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnzhu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}