Making a story package pop

This front page is one of my favorites I’ve designed recently. The Hagel story screamed for a pensive Hagel shot. We found this wire photo and I decided to run with it. My first instinct was to typset the headline in reverse on the photo. I planned on just running the story below the photo, but after much collaboration with Bill and Julia we opted to reverse out the story under the photo by extending a black background below the photo. Then, because there was a related story we opted to include it in the same box. The main issue was keeping Hagel’s body from floating in the box. I grounded him out using a white frame. Lastly, we opted for the large dots to separate the two stories.

Overall, I was really proud of this packaging. It made the stories pop off the page. I’ve done reverse in small quantities before, but this was a large amount of reverse type that actually seemed to work.