Please create a 100-200 word response to the video. Please comment on concepts that were of special significance, that are new to you, that you agree with, or disagree. Feel free to provide examples (visual or textual) that you may have run across.
I do not expect summaries of the readings but instead reflection about how the concepts and information can be used in the classroom or in graphic projects.
Please also comment on at least one other of your classmates posts. Something a bit more substantive than "I agree".
Place reflection here.
Place reflection here.
1.) A key point (agreement) - the importance of mental associations made by the reader and thus beginning by thinking of what you want the piece to say. Choosing a type that reinforces the “atmosphere” you wish to create, whether whimsical or serious, and avoiding type that confuses/competes with your message is critical to effective communication.
ReplyDelete2.) A key point (disagreement) - Santa Maria claims “no rules” in type design. I disagree (because I like structure but freedom within it) and this is in direct opposition of our Williams book. Rules should allow for exception, of course, but they are established based on what works (the importance of proportion taught by Fibonacci and in the Brown video). That being said, and to Williams’ point, you can break the rules if you know them and justify the reason for doing so.
In terms of classroom usage of these concepts, I thought of the Carey theory (type which is unfamiliar/hard to read creates more retention). Alternatively, because many people will simply give up on a hard-to-read message rather than extend extra effort, this creates lack of learning rather than higher retention, therefore a reader-friendly type will most effectively communicate classroom concepts.
Kelly, I think the "no rules" is a fine line to walk as well. I'd imagine Santa Maria would have a hard time justifying the "no rules" approach on some of the stuff out there.
DeleteHe said there is no rules but some principles: ) I agree with him because all depend on the situation, the special project you are working on.
DeleteI like the word principles better also Heather. Principles that can be broken. Many aspects of posters for some Punk Concerts back in my youth broke a lot of principles but conveyed the feeling of the style of music but may have failed in communicating location and times.
DeleteVery good point Kelly, visual association that is straight to the point and does not confuse people is vital. Also agree that structure is good to have, like the ADDIE model where adjustments can be made at any point of the project.
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DeleteI knew that using fonts and sizes, colors, etc. were very important when it comes to writing a paper or creating a resume or anything educational or occupational. Or at least I thought I did, there was so much more detail than I ever thought possible when it comes to choosing fonts and sizes and everything else. The video has given me many ideas on how to improve my resume or my CV, I always wondered why I couldn’t find a decent job and part of the reason must be the look of it. For the jobs I was going for a plain resume worked but it also had the college degree on there and that makes it almost impossible for me to get hired for a manual labor job. And vice/versa, for a nice teaching position or just a professional job anywhere the CV didn’t look professional enough with the kind of fonts, sizes etc. that needed to stick out and make them overlook that my work experience, because it’s mostly lifting things for a living. Very eye opening video to say the least.
DeleteBefore I watched the video I knew that when I wrote academic articles, presentation slides, resumes and so on, I should select the fonts which were easy to be read; also character size and color, contrast and line space were matter. In those situations, I usually use “Times New Roman” font or “Arial” font, because they meet my requirements well. After watching the video, I understood that I should increase the line spaces for the long sentences and heavy weight characters in my revised CV. That will make it easier to read. I am thinking about use some colors to promote the comfort of my CV’s readers. The main reason I did not do that was I thought usually the employers would like to print CVs out just in black and white. If I use some other colors, the CV might look nice through a displayer, but it will become poor in contrast while being printed out. Printing out is another considerable context for typography.
ReplyDeleteThe video also introduce an interesting phenomenon that the top half of words are more meaningful than the bottom half. Although I cannot use it in my CV, I believe it is valuable for some other situations.
QI,
DeleteI think you're spot on w/ the idea of print. It's a whole other animal and we have to be sensitive to how our material is being viewed.
Nice point QI, also I think the colored printed copy of the CV depends on the quality of the printer. Your colors may be slightly different when printed out. I guess we need to take into consideration this issue and how much color variance can be tolerated.
DeletePrint is another matter. Like I said in class it is important to know what the final output will be. If the end user will print it out it is hard to tell what the output will look like. Will they be using inkjet, laser jet, old beat up printer that has only blue and yellow ink? You seem to have a bit more control over something like a webpage but even then different browsers display differently.
DeleteTypography is often an overlooked art form and definitely suffers in the academic world where so many rules [formats] are already set in stone. The academics who established these formats I'd doubt were scholars in typography. Design, especially typography, seems to get the short end of the stick. Just like there is power in naming, there is certainly power in type. I strongly agree w/ the idea of contrast presented by Santa Maria. As discussed in class, it's important to visualize as shapes and chunks of information to establish relationships. One battle that we will continue to face with design and type is the ever changing world of the tools we can use to design with. There will be always be a cost, whether it be time to research or money (or both), to which we'll have to decide whether it's worth it or not (we call can't be "font nerds"). That being said, in my opinion it's more often than not worth it based on the idea that true/clear communication is the essence of a number of things in life.
ReplyDeleteP.S. I'll always loathe Papyrus.
John,
DeleteI agree with your opinion about the neglect of typography. In our daily lives, many people pay little attention to it. It is mostly because of that they do not need to do that. For example, when administration documents are made, the writers often select what they often use in terms of font and size. The color almost are black. There are many similar cases. But I believe these cases can become better by employing typography.
Hi, John - I rather like Papyrus - but don't hold it against me ;o)
DeleteI never take typography seriously before watching this video. Now I find it is an amazing field that combines art, technology, and science. Good typography can reinforce the meaning of the text and draw our attention to the most important in formation, and also appealing when displayed. When designing with text, we need to carefully consider the purpose and conditions of our text. The work we presented should attract our audiences and make them “want to read it”. When working on a résumé, I think the top thing we need to consider is how to clearly deliver the information. So some handwriting fonts and “fancy” fonts should be better avoided due to the potential cause of vagueness, and strong contrast can be used to strength the organization. Images and strong color contrast can usually make a résumé stand out, but I think I’d like to avoid them when I doubt the appropriateness of the images and colors.
ReplyDeleteI like how you bring these ideas back to the project. Font can define and bring context to an idea. Like in the video when the speaker showed advertisements and the fonts embodied the ideas that wanted to be conveyed. like the add that wanted to be sophisticated, it had a very sophisticated style to it
DeleteI agree with you Siyang. We have to know our audience when when we design. Most resumes/cv are not the place to get too far away from the classic.
DeleteBeing new to the world of design I never realized the sheer extent of thought that has been put into a concept I use to think so simple, font. As the speaker points out, I never knew that the top half of the font is the most important and the bottom less important to communication and our eyes really don’t read the whole word but jump around and come to pause on one spot and our brains are pretty much processing shapes.
ReplyDeleteThe speaker also defines readability very well, it’s not that you can read, it’s that you want to read it. He brings up many good design points that can help in choosing and using a type. Contrast to me was huge it was amazing how many different ways you can make the same font look just by changing minuet things like all caps, or bolding, or line spacing. I never also never thought how color of the font should increase the line height to increase readability.
He brought up so many good points but one thing annoyed me during his presentation and I don’t know if I just missed it or what but, the speaker talks about all these good fonts and why they are good fonts and then he dumps on comic sans, which I have seen many others do. I am not denying that it is a poor font in many/most to all circumstances, but would it not have it uses and niche like any other font, what makes it so bad. In my ignorance as a new designer can anyone explain to me why exactly is comic sans such a bad font, I am curious to see people’s responses. Is it the line spacing, flow, character height, the tracking, the kerning, is it disfluent, what is it?
"it’s not that you can read, it’s that you want to read it" Exactly! Our book also gives a lot of amazing examples.
DeleteI guess comic sans became a bad font because it is often used improperly. I think I have read an article explains why Helvetica is good (the video also refers to it a bit), but I'm not sure if there is analysis on other fonts.
Nick - I like that in your post and in the class discussion, you bring the scientific element of thought into this realm! I'm a non-science & non-math person and more wordsy/relational/creative, so hearing a scientist's perspective is helpful! I do recall reading something before about how our eyes skip over "unimportant" words - for instance, you know how many people make the mistake of saying "I should of done X", when it's really "should HAVE done X", it's because of the sound, too, but "of" is a throwaway word just like "the" - we register it without reading it. About comic sans, I've come to disparage it because of my life in Corporate World - it looks like the writing you see in comic strips and has long ago been deemed as unprofessional. Plus in other contexts, it's probably viewed as a lazy choice like Times New Roman ;o) I'd also like to know what others think on this - maybe I just jumped on the comic sans hater bandwagon to be like the cool kids ;o)
DeleteNick like Jason comes back to say that there is no such thing as a bad font but I think that is widely over used and used improperly. The 'non-designers' often think they are being creative by using another font but most of the time it does not convey the proper feel for their project.
DeleteCan I ask what type of font is used on this blog? is there a way to find out. Just curious
DeleteAfter watching the video, I wasn’t realizing the facts of the effects that typography make almost everyday in our lives. I totally agree that typefaces enforces the visual identity, I can think that if anyone of us sees the typeface of the letter M of the McDonalds, the first thing that will come to mind is McDonalds.
ReplyDeleteI also agree that typefaces give the impression of whether what I am going to read is interesting or not. When we look at a page to read for example a CV you would get an impression from the first look/read whether you would like to proceed reading it even without knowing what is inside it. For me, typefaces with a good contrast are interesting and more comfy to read.
But the claim that has pulled my attention, was that the poorly-designed fonts drag attention and retain information because our brains takes a longer time to process it, so the info sticks to the brain. I don’t think that. If the font was not comfortable to read, I would not bother to read it unless I have to! Like for an exam as an example.
Nidal,
DeleteThank you for sharing your interesting examples in comments.
I agree that the first impression on a CV is very important. A well-organized and professional CV may leaves positive impression and brings greater chance of interview.
DeleteNidal - I liked that you used advertising/marketing as an example, because it reminded me of my basic marketing courses in undergrad - about how every element should be aligned with the "brand" - this is the same concept that we are learning now about how all the elements, especially type/font, should reflect the feeling/purpose/brand of our project! Lastly - I smiled at your phrase in paragraph 2 that some types are "comfy to read" - I've had that feeling too but never put words to it, so thanks!!!
DeleteIt is so easy to influence and change human beings’ feeling by slightly changing the color, sound, odour, space, shape...etc. What we see impacts and often decides what we feel. That’s why font is important. Font is a namecard. It shows your taste.
ReplyDeleteThe video provides many useful points of typography. For example, “type is a beautiful group of letters, not a group of beautiful letters.” To achieve the beautiful effect, nothing works all the time, it depends on the situation - the type of project, the dimension/size, special features, prolonged reading, internationalizaton - and you must try by yourself. There are principles that you can learn: bigger is better, heavier color needs more space to achieve balance, using contrast, consider the readability and distinguishness, etc. However, you have to try and to adjust, to feel the balance, space, shape and lines of your work.
My two questions of font are: 1. Copyright of font. It seems there are always lots of restrictions. 2. How to make sure the font could be displayed normally (it seems a PDF format not always works). I often use Times New Roman because of this problem.
The advice of developing personal palette is extremely useful. I have the habit to collect pictures, and now I should start to collect font.
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DeleteHi Heather,
DeleteThose are great questions. I never think about copyright when I using different fonts. I looked it up and found this webpage is helpful. http://blog.crowdspring.com/2011/03/font-law-licensing/
Good question about copyrighted fonts. I meant to mention it in class. As a designer you have to purchase some fonts and just figure it into the cost of the project just like a builder figures in the cost of lumber or nails.
DeleteHeather, I agree with you on the feelings part of fonts and after watching this video, the proximity of font, the boldness, and the spaces all make a difference visually for the reader.
DeleteI was shocked that people study and research why and when to use a certain type and font. It is amazing to me that it can affect the way people view a certain article or even a menu. It can also change their mood.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the color change and different background changes but I still see that if the type is clear and not childish looking that it is ok to use for example academic text. After watching the video, it is clearly not the case.
When he mentioned contrast, display faces for short texts and big headlines and others that are made to be for written texts, I totally agree because some texbooks are so hard to read because of the type of font, while others just flow.
He also mentioned comic sans and Arial as evil. I like Arial and use it often for written text? Is it a text for casual written work ( blogs) ? Or is it for headings and headlines only? Why is it considered ugly?
Nadeyah
DeleteI also believe that type which is clear and professional can be beneficial in a variety of settings. Many have a tendency to believe that something pleasing to our eyes is pleasing to all which is not always the case. Simplicity is sometimes better.
I have had some experience with type and fonts when I took an undergrad course at Ohio University, The Literacy Crisis: Origins and Effects. The course emphasized the need for type and fonts that can be inclusive to all. We sometimes lose sight of how difficult it can be to read for many of those we associate with due to simple things like font and type.
ReplyDeleteDinner menus are great examples of how challenging it can be to read when not type and font are not inclusive. Many high-end restaurants love to use 'fancy' type that often runs together and is difficult to read in darker settings. Steak and Shake often uses smaller fonts on their menus making it difficult to read for those who struggle in this capacity due to eyesight (I am an example).
Type and fonts can set the tone for important documents and can keep the reader interested and engages. Sometimes 'ugly' fonts can be positive simply because they increase readability.