News Page Design: Geek Style

Like it or not, part of the fun in any movie is how it's marketed. A movie that's not sold properly rarely ever finds its audience, and if it can't find its audience then you might as well not have bothered ... right?

Right.

For those of us who are hardcore film fans, it used to be fun to watch the local newspapers cover a film's release. Bitching about Critic X is a sport in itself for movie geeks, and many of us only read newspapers on Fridays and Sundays to see their entertainment coverage.

As desktop publishing became more common, newspapers began to let their artistic talent go a little crazy (in a good way.) By the beginning of the century it was pretty common to see Batman, the Hulk and even the Watchmen dominating the covers of entertainment sections — and it became a challenge for designers to find ways to incorporate these characters without relying on that tired old "Bam! Pow!" crap.

Over the years I've come across some pretty great newspages and held on to them. Now it's time to pass them along. First up is one of the craziest ideas I've ever seen: A Harry Potter themed entertainment section. This comes from a newspaper in Texas which allowed their staff to design an entire section as though it was a newspaper in the Harry Potter films.

These images are very large (and this site is already image intensive) so I'll post a few a day. After Harry Potter we'll move along to Star Wars, Batman, the Hulk, Spider-Man and others.