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Today's lecture focused on how type should be properly set to ensure that legibility and readability are successful. This is a crucial part of design that can often be forgotten when designing. I made some quick notes in the lecture to use later in the task.
Notes:
Grids - These serve as an armature or framework on which a designer can organize graphic elements in a rational, easy-to-absorb manner. Massimo Vignelli's Canon features some really useful grid layouts.
Legibility - The quality of being clear enough to read.
Notes:
Grids - These serve as an armature or framework on which a designer can organize graphic elements in a rational, easy-to-absorb manner. Massimo Vignelli's Canon features some really useful grid layouts.
Legibility - The quality of being clear enough to read.
“Line length that contain 45 to 65 characters (characters include letters, numerals, punctuation and spaces) are legible. Line lengths exceeding these limits challenge legibility." - Fasset's Theorem of Legible Line Length
• Typeface / Serif or Sans
• x-height
Readability - The ease with which a reader can understand a written text and the way in which words and blocks of type are arranged in a layout.
• Tracking/Kerning
• Leading/Line Height
• Type Size
• Contrast
• Hierachy
Type Size/Contrast - Basically we stick to no more then two type sizes on a printed page, but there are exceptions.
We like to play off small type with larger type - usually twice as big (for instance, 10 pt text and 20 pt headings). I prefer to keep the same size for heads and subheads in a text, and just make them in bold, with a line space between them.
Alignment - “Most of the time we use flush left. This type of alignment derives from metal composition, particularly in Linotype. Formerly it was faster to keep the alignment on the left side rather then having to kern the slug for every line. It also makes more sense since in our culture we read from left to right and it is better for the eye to go to the next line than having to cope with hyphens all the time. However, it is important to control the shape of the rugged side by shifting sometimes the text from line to line to obtain a better profile. This may be time consuming but aesthetically rewarding." - Vignelli, 2010
Paragraphs of centered text are the hardest to read and justified text can create rivers. Therefore, flush left text is usually the best for readability.
Orphans & Widows - A “Widow” is a line of text at the end of a paragraph separated from the rest of the text, meaning that this line is either in the next column or in the next page. It can also appear as an opening line of a paragraph at the bottom of the column or a page, thus separated from the rest of the paragraph.
An “Orphan” is a word or few words in its own row that end a paragraph, thus creating too much white space between paragraphs.
Task:
In preparation for this task I was asked to analyse and critique a takeaway menu. I chose a cafe/deli counter from back home called Shake Waffle & Roll - an American Style deli specialising in Belgian Waffles and Milkshakes.
• Typeface / Serif or Sans
• x-height
Readability - The ease with which a reader can understand a written text and the way in which words and blocks of type are arranged in a layout.
• Tracking/Kerning
• Leading/Line Height
• Type Size
• Contrast
• Hierachy
Type Size/Contrast - Basically we stick to no more then two type sizes on a printed page, but there are exceptions.
We like to play off small type with larger type - usually twice as big (for instance, 10 pt text and 20 pt headings). I prefer to keep the same size for heads and subheads in a text, and just make them in bold, with a line space between them.
Alignment - “Most of the time we use flush left. This type of alignment derives from metal composition, particularly in Linotype. Formerly it was faster to keep the alignment on the left side rather then having to kern the slug for every line. It also makes more sense since in our culture we read from left to right and it is better for the eye to go to the next line than having to cope with hyphens all the time. However, it is important to control the shape of the rugged side by shifting sometimes the text from line to line to obtain a better profile. This may be time consuming but aesthetically rewarding." - Vignelli, 2010
Paragraphs of centered text are the hardest to read and justified text can create rivers. Therefore, flush left text is usually the best for readability.
Orphans & Widows - A “Widow” is a line of text at the end of a paragraph separated from the rest of the text, meaning that this line is either in the next column or in the next page. It can also appear as an opening line of a paragraph at the bottom of the column or a page, thus separated from the rest of the paragraph.
An “Orphan” is a word or few words in its own row that end a paragraph, thus creating too much white space between paragraphs.
Task:
In preparation for this task I was asked to analyse and critique a takeaway menu. I chose a cafe/deli counter from back home called Shake Waffle & Roll - an American Style deli specialising in Belgian Waffles and Milkshakes.
The overall menu is very plain and boring, with inconsistent blocks of text randomly placed, making the overall menu difficult to quickly skim across in a systematic way. The varying lengths of descriptive texts is also very problematic because it can cause varying negative spaces on each line. This creates an inconsistency that really makes the design look disorganised and unstructured.
The menu appears to use over 5 type sizes and styles throughout, which is more than the recommended amount. This may not be a massive problem; however, I think that by creating consistency throughout the menu it will make the overall viewing experience more legible and readable.
With my redesign I carried over the colour schemes and information in a much more structured manor and have produced a clearer response in my opinion.
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