OK. I numbered them, which I should've done in the first place. Which style is it that you like?
Style 1 was a good starting place, but I don't see yellow anywhere as a club color. I changed it to green to match the green of the leaf on the peach. I also changed the fonts to match other fonts used. The colors on the section titles were changed to more closely resemble the peach colors.
I changed from style 2 to style 3, because I didn't want our newsletter to be lacking, compared to the newsletters of other clubs, and the header didn't seem to be a favorite in our club. The header font was changed to match the font used on the web site. The header color was changed to more closely resemble the members sticker, and curvature was added to the header for the same reason.
Style 4 was an attempt to more closely resemble the web site. I like the gradient background, but the dark color was rather overwhelming, and readability was an issue, in addition to the issues mentioned previously. Were this style to be continued throughout the newsletter, it would necessitate a lot of additional work to make the newsletter presentable. Also, I couldn't get the header image balanced.
Style 5 had the same issues with readability and header imbalance as style 4. The gradient on top looked good, but the section gradients would have to go.
There were other iterations. I tried hard to get the header to work. That text doesn't work well for this against that background. Perhaps if I faded the background in that image, and made the text solid, but I'm not that talented. I finally came to the conclusion that nothing I could do with that header would give me the clean look I was going for. Over the course of several days, I would let it sit for a bit, and come back, just to see how if affected my view. I decided that I reacted more positively to vivid, bright colors and contrasts than to darker colors. I didn't want to go through all the effort of recreating the borders and curves that are on the message board, because it isn't sustainable. Compare between this message board and PFF. Aside from navigation, the mood is entirely different. Nothing against PFF, but I think the styles 1-3 are easier to read than styles 4 and 5.
I like the gradient background, also. I could do the part at the top of the one in style 5 on select newsletters, but only on the first page. This presents a lot of challenges with consistency. Originally, I wanted to have the gradient around the newsletter frame, and leave the inside in white, like the web site. Not only did this prove unexpectedly difficult to accomplish, it looked gosh awful, and required a solid header. It looked dig-your-eyes-out awful. I was rather disappointed with the results of that effort. I tried both lighter and darker colors. None of the looks caught my eye.
I printed one page of a bunch of these with my laser printer on card stock, and on high-quality paper, then clipped them to a strip down the length of my basement. My kids and I placed them in order of like or not like. Most of the styles weren't liked.
