Journey from Concept to Creation : graphic design

Typography (Part Three).

Adman — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 16:43:00 GMT

A long, long (really long) time ago I promised to offer some tips on typography. At long last, here they are. I hope they were worth the wait. My blog had to take the back seat for a few weeks...ok, months if you insist on counting the holidays. But never fear, I am still here...sort of like that nagging cough that you can't get rid of... But, deep down inside, I know you have missed me. I am so charming and witty...

So....here are some general tips for specifying type. They are in no particular order as none is necessarily more important than another. Remember that these are just basic guidelines...as you become more practiced as a designer, you can start to break some (but not all) of the rules.

* Ideally, stick with the same type family for any given job. Get variety by changing the size and blackness -- and by using condensed and expanded versions and italics.
* While it is permissible to mix a body face with a headline face, stay away from mixing two headline faces.
* Constrain mixing to two faces -- three at the most.
* Typestyles designed during the same time period do not necessarily go together… the character of the letters are a much better barometer to use when mixing types.
* Old style Romans and Modern Romans do NOT go together and should never be combined.
* Typestyles with different “x-heights” provide different degrees of weight when set as body copy. They can be used to help balance your layout...just as the "weight" of the letters.
* Sans serif fonts can be used with almost any other typestyle. They are considered to be a neutral fonts.
* Sans serifs should NOT be mixed with slab serif fonts.
* Type mixing is mostly a matter of having good taste and artistic talent.
* As a general rule, only mix types that are either very similar or very dissimilar. Others will appear to the reader as being convoluted – as if something is amiss.
* When using colorful type, go a little larger and fatter than using black to compensate for the lack of darkness.
* Never use small, weak serifs when reversing type or for use in Standard Denition video. Sans serif fonts are preferable in these applications.
* Consider the use of ligatures, especially in headlines and logotypes. They can sometimes provide a more artistic or cleaner look. (Assuming the chosen font supports them, they can be found in the Character Map (Windows) or Key Caps (Apple) or by selecting “automatic ligature substitution” in your application.)
* Explore the character map (Windows) or key caps (Mac) for special characters that aren’t available via the keyboard… learn the keyboard shortcuts for frequently used special characters.
* Avoid script and cursive fonts that were designed to mimic handwriting. None of these fonts can adequately mimic handwriting and they only look phoney.
* Generally, avoid using the Old English font. It is difficult to read and it tends to attracts attention to itself at the expense of the message.
* For web design work, consider using Georgia (serif) and/or Verdana (sans serif). These FREE, high x-height fonts were designed to be legible on computer screens. They also work well with video monitors. For other suitable fonts, look for high x-heights, extended versions and “hinted” fonts. Bitstream, ITC and Monotype offer fonts with hinting.
* Roman (serif) fonts are considered to be easier to read when used as body copy. The serifs form an “imaginary” line, helping to hold the eye on the line as it is read from left to right. Most magazines use Roman typefaces exclusively for body copy.
* When working with type, “being different” is not a virtue. Through habit, readers are accustomed to seeing certain standards in typography. Change, in this case, can result in lower readership and/or legibility.
* Break paragraphs into columns no more than 39 lower-case characters wide. The bigger the type, the wider the columns can be.
* Drop caps can also be used to help draw the reader into your body copy, easing the reader from larger headlines to the body copy. But, the drop cap must be unied with the copy in terms of tone and mood. (Some designers consider drop caps as being dated.)
* Take “quality time” to manually kern your headlines. Kern them so that they are optically balanced. Properly "kerned" headlines are the mark of a true professional.
* As a "rule of thumb" – leading should be 120% of the point size.
* Use “hinted” fonts when possible.
* In the early stage of type specication, rst think in terms of classications or categories of type, (Gothic vs. Roman. Old-style Roman vs Transitional Roman)… then narrow it down to a specic typestyle.
* In addition, I suggest that you get into the habit of looking at the work that is out there… and consider the type choices that were used… and why.
* If you cannot nd a specic type name, it may be listed under a different name as different vendors often have equivalent fonts under different names. Apparently, it is easier to copyright typestyle names than the actual designs themselves.
* User proper typesetting conventions – real typographic “curly” quotation marks, real EN dashes (hyphens separating numbers, etc.) and REAL EM dashes (longer marks separating thoughts – most page layout programs will convert these automatically when you type two subsequent hypens (which is proper when using a standard typewriter).
* When doing layouts, it is a good idea to look at pages “in context.” For example, if you are doing a DVD cover, do each panel independently as it will be viewed by the purchaser of the DVD. If a magazine ad, you may want to position it in an actual magazine to see how it will look in-context as well. This may affect your choice of fonts and/or the relative point sizes, etc., of the work.

Alright... that ends the series on Typography. I'll let you ponder the subject of my next blog...but I'll try not to wait too long this time. I can only use the "holidays" excuse once a year.

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Color.

Adman — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 06:42:00 GMT

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I was doing a demo recording for a friend a few years ago. The subject of choosing colors came up while I was working on the CD cover design. I remember her saying that she was impressed with my taste in choosing a good color scheme, claiming that it is a talent that few men possess. While there is "method to the madness" of choosing compatible colors for use in design work, I didn’t mention it to her at the time. I preferred to let her believe that I had creative talent that few men possess. Anyway, while an exhaustive study of color theory could fill many books, I will cut to the chase and try to offer a concise and useful overview.

Specifying color is largely a matter of understanding the color wheel – first developed by Sir Issac Newton (a man) in 1667 – which is centered on a logically organized sequence of pure color hues. It was refined by Albert H. Munsell (another man) in 1905 (Munsell introduced the concept of Hue, Chroma (Intensity or Saturation) and Value). The order of colors on the color wheel follow the order of colors seen when light is shown through a prism. The color wheel is made up of three primary, three secondary, and six tertiary colors – a total of 12 basic hues. The three primary colors are red, yellow and blue. Mixing them creates the secondary colors; green, orange and purple. The Tertiary Colors are formed by mixing a primary color with a secondary color. They are yellow-orange, red-orange, red-purple, blue-purple, blue-green and yellow-green.
When specifying color, it is necessary to understand how color impacts people. Here are a few examples:

*   Color choices should reflect your target market (women -- far more "color conscious" than men -- like red while men like blue) as well as the other strategic factors mentioned in my blogs, depending on the mood you want to convey and the emotional response you want to elicit.
*   Color choices should reflect the culture and religion where your work will be seen as color can have different meanings in different parts of the world (there is no proven “universal reaction” to colors). For example, white is associated with death in eastern cultures as black is in the west.
*   An object shown in a bright color looks larger than the same object shown in a dark color. Bright color "radiates," drawing the eye outward and expanding the object. If you are selling "size," you might consider using a brightly colored sample of the merchandise.
*   Hermann Rorschach, the Swiss psychologist found that cheerful people are more responsive to color while melancholy people respond better to shape. If you want to limit your market to those who have a more serious interest, you might want to keep the color subdued as color allows the viewer to be somewhat more passive... weeding out lukewarm prospects.
*   Color has been proven to be far more effective (up to 70%) in advertising than black and white... the added cost in printing color is marginal by comparison.

Red is considered to be a “Hot” color. It can stimulate physical activity and sexual desire… passion, aggression and anger. It can make people feel hungry and increase respiration and blood pressure. You can use it for emphasis, although it was drilled into my head in art school that yellow is the “most advancing color” – it will draw the eye first. Yellow can symbolize joy, happiness, wealth, hope, weakness, greed and friendship. Yellow and Black symbolize danger or caution. White is purity and truth. Violet is royalty... and loneliness. Green is fresh and fruitful... envy and guilt. "True blue" is fidelity. In fact, every color has symbolism that can be used to affect your market (color can also be used to implement principles of design, but it is subordinate to shape).
Blue, Green and Blue-Green are considered to be “Cold” colors. They denote coldness, cleanliness and freshness -- explaining why these colors are so popular in laundry detergent package design. Warm colors are based on red but “softened” and suffused with orange and yellows. Cool colors are based on blue and suffused with reds and yellows. Warm colors cheer and stimulate while cool colors calm and relax.
Combinations of warm grays and cool grays are often used for shadows in renderings; usually resulting in more a realistic look when compared to using black. Artists also use a color’s complement to create shadows (sunlit objects in nature will have shadows with a hint of the object color's complement). When you stare at a color and then look at a white sheet of paper you will see a "ghost" of the color's complement.
While any color can be combined (as in nature) if you choose the correct value and intensity, aesthetically pleasing color combinations have been found to lie with colors on opposite ends of the color wheel (complements), equidistant from each other (triads), those that lie on either side of the color (blended) or on either side of the complementary color (split complementary). The closer colors are on the color wheel, the more harmonious they are. Colors on opposite sides complement each other. Use of color in design should be mostly harmonious or mostly complementary; mostly cool or mostly warm. There are numerous color schemes -- achromatic, monochromatic, analogous, complementary, triadic, rectangular, pentagonal, etc. Achromatic schemes consist of blacks, whites and neutral grays. Monochromatic schemes are based on one color and its various tints and shades. Analogous schemes are three colors that are adjacent to each other on the color wheel. The Primary color scheme is made up of the three primary colors… strong and energetic, it is often used in designs targeting children. Secondary color schemes are also strong and energetic but more sophisticated.
Here are a couple of links that help to make the task of color specification easier, if not a "no brainer." Check out Color Blender and Kuler. They are awesome resources for specifying color. With tools like these, (and my blog) there is simply no reason for not having beautifully spec'd color schemes in your designs. Of course if you are a woman you won't need them.

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"Divine Proportion."

Adman — Sun, 27 May 2007 05:42:00 GMT

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One of the best ways to understand the last of my five principles of design -- proportion -- is to study nature. When you look across a landscape, you don’t typically see one tree that is precisely one half as high as another… or one cloud that is one quarter the size of the next one… or stars and galaxies that are equidistant from each other. Nature cares little about such obvious mathematical relationships and good design follows the examples of nature in this regard.
That is not to say that nature isn’t mathematical. The elements of nature -- clouds, plants, geographical features, animals, stars, galaxies, etc., do have pleasing proportions and the proportional relationships are based on what mathematicians call “irrational” mathematics.

There is a “divine proportion” that occurs frequently and abundantly in nature. It is generally referred to as the “golden ratio.” When a line is divided by the golden ratio (Phi -- the “irrational” number 1.6180339887...), the resulting proportions are visually pleasing. The Pythagoreans (circa 500 BC) believed this to be divinely inspired.
The history of the golden ratio goes back at least to 500 BC. [If you create a sequence of numbers (starting with 0, 1) by adding the last two numbers in the sequence together you will have what is called the Fibonacci sequence -- 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13 and so forth. As you divide each resulting number into the previous number, the result resolves into the golden ratio.] But, as recently as 1854, Adolf Zeising discovered that the branches along stems of plants and the veins in leaves were expressions of the golden ratio -- so are the dimensions of the human body, other skeletal forms, sunflower florets, seashells such as the Nautilus (a Fibbonacci spiral). and countless other occurences in nature ranging from the logarithmic spirals of hurricanes and galaxies (completely unrelated phenonoma) to the flight pattern of a falcon diving on its prey.
When the length of a line is divided by the golden ratio (rounded to 1.62), and split into segments based on the resulting length, the length of the shorter segment is to the longer segment what the length of the longer segment is to the entire length of the line. Renaissance artists used this “divine proportion” to design paintings, sculpture and architecture. It is believed to have been used in works ranging from the Mona Lisa to the Parthenon (and the great pyramids). The Parthenon is considered to be the finest example of proportion in the history of architecture.
In art school, one of the layout styles I learned about is called the Mondrian layout. It is named after the Dutch painter, Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) who is considered to be the father of advertising design. He used grids extensively… with the grids following the tenets of the golden ratio or divine proportion. In the Mondrian tradition, contemporary graphic designers often use the “rule of thirds” to create layout grids which result in these universally pleasing proportions.
This is achieved by first dividing your layout dimensions into thirds, and then to divide the top most resulting dimension by thirds again. Then dividing each column in halves. This grid is then used as a guide in determing the placement of the elements of design -- according, of course, to the principles of design that I have been discussing in this blog.
Speaking of the other principles, proportion is closely related to balance and emphasis… and sequence. Different proportions of visual to copy, for example, can send uniquely different messages, even when using identical elements of design. The use of proper proportion results in unequal dimensions -- without obvious mathematical relationships -- which help to create a lively, interesting and pleasing design.
The golden ratio is seen in musical compositions from Bartok' to Bach, Beethoven and Mozart. Stradivari used the golden ratio for the placement of the f-holes in his famous violins. On the piano, there are 13 musical notes separating each octave of 8 notes (the golden ratio). The keys of a piano also consist of the golden ratio -- a scale of 13 keys, 8 white, 5 black split into groups of 3 and 2.
Contemporaneously, the ubiquitious golden ratio is used in abundance -- at least in its approximate form. If you use the "a" and "b" lengths from the example above, to create a rectangle, you will have what is referred to as the "golden oblong" -- considered to be the perfect rectangle. Visa® and Mastercard® aspect ratios are close approximations, as are the aspect ratios of some popular video screens… including cinematic aspect ratios (1920 x 1200 and 720 x 480).

If you go back to my previous blogs you will find that I have referred to Bill Bernback's "Think Small" ad numerous times. It is a remarkable example of practically everything I have discussed. In the great Mondrian tradition, it is not too surprising to find that Bernback also used the rule of thirds when creating what is considered to be the most divine ad of all time.

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