Week 2 Outside of Class

This weekend I finished my black and white glyph layouts. The first three pictures are my layouts. But I also created two pages with other options. The fourth picture I used a different typeface. The first picture is using a serif typeface, so I created one using a sans serif typeface to ask the class which one they thought worked better. I also created an alternative to picture three. In picture three, the paragraph is centered in the middle of the page. In the last picture, I moved the paragraph to the bottom corner to reflect the black glyph in the top corner.

This weekend I also read pages 12-18, 37, 38, 39, and 46-49 in our book. These were some of the notes that I took: 

• Every publication begins as an idea: a subject or message with a function but no form
• The form is what changes
• The vehicle for these ideas is related to their secondary functions - the kind of audience the idea addresses
• No matter what the vehicle, though, the process of designing it is the same, and it begins with developing the content that will convey the message
• The initial step in thinking about how a publication becomes a reality is to focus on what the subject matter of the message may be
• The primary function is the subject matter itself
• The secondary function of an idea is to be relevant and accessible to a particular group of people in a way that makes sense for them
• Some messages are serial and evolutionary - meaning they occur periodically with new components that build on previous occurrences - ex. newspapers and magazines
• Other messages are "systematic" - occurring at one time as a group, or at several junctures, as individual parts of an overall group - ex. groups of brochures
• Most ideas have a tertiary function - which is to deliver emotional, associational, or cultural interpretation to the audience, to position it relative to other forms or vehicles of the same idea
• This is sometimes biased on part of the author and can be called its "spin" or "angle"
• An example of an interpretive, tertiary function is branding - the experience of an author's corporate or cultural identity
• The interpretive function may be benign or ulterior, meaning that its function is to be transparent - a signal or identifier - or layered, providing a point of view that affects the meaning of the message - developing loyalty among the audience
• Examples - branding of newspaper is benign - the goal is to differentiate the newspaper as a source of information
• Branding of an annual report is ulterior - its goal is to influence the audience's perception of the information in one direction or the other
• The concept must have a form in order for the audience to see it - which may include stories, photographs, illustrations, or other visual displays
• Build a Design Brief: A Concepting Checklist
• What is the publication's subject matter?
• Into how many parts will the information be broken? What are the parts?
• Is the subject organic or manmade? Concrete or abstract?
• What colors are associated with the subject matter (literal or emotional)?
• Who is going to read about the subject? Who will not be reading about it?
• What other publications already exist about the subject?
• List two words about each that describe their visual qualities.
• List five words that describe the subject as you want to interpret it. How are these different from the words that describe existing publications on the subject?
• How often do readers need the information? In what context will they find the information: through subscription, as a membership benefit, at a newsstand?
• The subject matter is the driving force behind the design

Resonating with the Audience - The Secondary Function of Concept

• First, the identity, or demographic makeup, of the people to be targeted is important - are they young or old, male or female, etc
• Second factor in establishing an audience is their assumed need for the information in a particular way, at particular times or through a particular delivery message
• The relationship of time to informational need is yet another factor in determining audience
• Also need to think about audience's level of taste

Paragraph Architecture - The Building Blocks of Text Type

• The paragraph is the archetypal building block of a text
• Wordspace can be defined by the width taken up by a lowercase i
• The space between words should be the minimum needed to separate them
• When wordspace becomes too great, lines of type begin to fracture
• Leading is the vertical measure from the baseline of the sentence below it
• The first considerations that affect the leading of a text are the height of the lowercase letters and the height and depth of their ascenders and descenders
• Leading is somewhat dependent on the width of a paragraph, the type size, and its spacing
• As paragraph width increases, so must the leading - however as paragraph width decreases, the leading still has to be increased
• Paragraph width also needs to be considered - too long and the text becomes difficult to read
• Paragraph width depends heavily on the size of type being used and, therefore, the number of characters that can fit on a single line
• Regardless of type size, between 50 and 80 characters (including spaces) can be processed before a return
• Approx. 8-12 words per line
• The proportions of the page format and the amount of text that must be made to fit may affect paragraph width

Composing Text in Space

• Justification makes all lines the same length
• Flush right, left, or centered creates different line length and the side that is nonaligned is called a rag
• Alignment and rag is another factor in determining a desirable text setting
• Alignement of text has an effect on the spacing within it
• Flush left, right, and centered have uniform workspace
• However, a justified paragraph varies
• One way to minimize the problem of justification, you could find the optimal flush-left paragraph and then widen the paragraph slightly or shrink the type size by half a point or a point

Investigating the Ragged Edge

• Ragged paragraphs offer the opportunity to avoid the spacing issues inherent in justified text
• The aligned edge restates the hard edge of the format, while the ragged edge counters it
• A rag may range from deep to shallow, active to subtle
• Ragged line endings are considered optimal if they create an organic, unforced ripple down the edge of the paragraph, without pronounced indents or bulges
• In an optimally ragged paragraph, the rag becomes invisible - the depth hovers between 1/5 and 1/7 of the paragraph's width
• Word order and word breaks across lines also affect the rag
• Short words left at the beginning or end of a sentence look weird
• Two successive lines that end in a hyphen is bad

Typographic Space

• Type and space interact in a figure/ground relationship that is mutually dependent
• Type (the figure, or positive element) defines the qualities of the space that it breaks; space (the ground) helps define the qualities of the type that exists within it
• The more even the proportions of these zones, the more neutral and passive the composition - give the impression that all of the elements are of the same value
• The more varied the proportions, the more dynamic - a quality that is considered desirable because it involves the viewer and stimulates the eye