Language of Design

I reviewed this very powerful YouTube video posted by "sphereboy" that uses several elements of design in it's demonstration of typography. This video uses an excerpt from Edna St. Vincent Millay's poem, Renascence. The video creator uses a combination of rhythm, texture, and proximity to develop this video.

Rhythm

The video, which is entirely text-based, shows a multitude of movements using the text as it appears on screen. Words sometimes appear suddenly providing its own "verbal beat" and sometimes they spiral in movement, along with the changing of text size from bigger to smaller, giving the appearance of falling from the sky or from smaller to bigger, giving the appearance of reaching for the sky, which reflects the verbal message on screen. The video uses music along with the movement, which makes the viewing experience more intense, but even without the music, the typography provides the rhythm in this case. The text is never static on screen, and often emphasizes the meaning of the words such as big, screaming, and pressing. An example is shown below. The video creator uses very strong, intense movement of those words on screen to visualize their verbal meaning.

Texture

The video creator uses only black text (with some shades of gray to show "fading") on white background. The video changes the texture of the words to emphasize verbal meaning. For example, "Look my fill into the sky" becomes out of focus, like your vision does when you just stare straight into the sky -- you stop focusing on anything specific and it all just becomes a blur. In another case, the video shows letters split into parts that become jagged to emphasize their verbal meaning, "forced back my scream" as shown below, implies rage and fear through the texture of the typography.

Proximity

The use of proximity to create visual tension is extremely powerful in this video. The way the words appear on screen, move, repeat, become jagged or faded, move toward each other and away from each other, etc. provides a level of intensity that matches the verbal message. The words of the poem have their own intensity and frustration, and the way the video creator uses all of this in this "kinetic poem" is fascinating. Even without listening to the music that accompanies the text, the visual typography creates its own intensity.

The video creator very effectively uses elements of design to express emotion and verbal meaning through design.

I hate Comic Sans.

Yes, you heard me....I HATE Comic Sans font. I spent years as a training manager trying to make my staff understand why it wasn't appropriate to use Comic Sans - that lofty, playful font - on instructional materials and reference guides at a law firm of all places. It's as far as you can get from "professional" as one possibly could. If you're using Comic Sans in a professional environment, you, my friend, have fallen off the edge of the cliff that divides the world of common sense and, well, that other world that I want no part of.

So, what is an appropriate font for instructional materials? I'm sure many have varying opinions, and it probably depends on what process you're providing instruction on, but keeping it simple is a good idea. For me, the point of providing the information in an instructional guide or reference guide is to make a process clearer. So, let's not muck up the document by adding ten different font types and six different colors - our job is to help the reader understand and focus, not distract them.

As a general rule, I use a sans serif font in the headings and a serif font in the main body of the document. I've broken this rule a million times, of course, as people seem to have a love of Arial, for its clean, concise look. I tend to use Arial in shorter, one page instructions, but when you get into a multi-page guide, I think a serif font is warranted. But which one?

Let me make a confession. Up until now, I haven't given too much thought to the nuances between all the different serif fonts, but when I really focus on them, I can see the differences in how much space their letters take up, how much space is between them, bracketed v. unbracketed. If you don't believe me, do a search on Google for font types. Or you can just look here .

I stumbled upon an article from the Australian Journal of Educational Technology. Interesting article if you've got the time. But I'll just focus on the topic du jour - the section on typeface and type styles. The research shows an overwhelming result that supports the use of serif font as it contributes to higher level of comprehension of material. But, they point out that "not all serif fonts are as readable as each other." The researcher, Wendy Priestly, advocates the use of "Palatino" font, 12pt on a 14 pt leading. Here's why she chose Palatino:

• few idiosyncratic features of the shape of its serifs, as opposed to that of Garamond and Bookman: for example, "g"'s


• consistent spacing of letters within a word, which is not the case with Avant Garde


• no fine lines or strong contrast between thick or thin lines from top to bottom of a letter to cause degradation in the photolithographic or photocopy process, such as often occurs with Times: for example, "f" and "o".


• no letters which appear to touch each other, such as is the case with Bookman's bottom serifs.


• a clear distinction between the "dots" of the i's and the j's with the lower part of the letter, as is not the case with Bookman's serifs and Times' kerned "f"'s and "i"'s.


• italics which show little distortion from 90 degrees in its typeface, as many of the other selections have a tendency to do.


• appropriate word spacing and internal letter spacing that Hartley (1987) indicates should be approximately 25% of the type size. This does not appear to be the case with Bookman or Times on the Macintosh system

Since I can't use Palatino font in this blog, here's a shot of what it looks like:

I have to admit....it is a lovely font. I'm going to try using this in some of my materials and see what the reaction is.