- ✔ Creating Your Design
- ✔ Follow these steps to create your Part I type composition.
- ✔ 1. Download one text file from the five listed above. When you open the chosen file you will find that the copy is set as running text. Copy and paste the text into your design software of choice. InDesign and Illustrator are particularly good choices for print pieces, and Photoshop or Fireworks for the Web site project. Be sure to create a file size in your design software that is appropriate to the piece you've chosen.
- ✔ 2. Read the text carefully, analyze it, and make yourself very familiar with the information. This is when the fun begins! Start thinking of typefaces that you think would really help to enhance the mood and tone of the information. To be obvious here, you would not use a flowing script face for a floor plan, would you? Revisit the lecture if needed for help in selecting a typeface from the appropriate category.
- ✔ 3. With your type tools and panels in your design software, start breaking down the information logically, giving it some structure and hierarchy. You don't need to use your chosen typeface at this point. Just think about the importance and order of information.
- ✔ For example, in the case of a menu you would make sure that the first course, the main course, and the third course are set in a logical sequence. The titles of each course would probably need a typographic solution to differentiate them clearly from the main body of the text. In the case of an event poster, you would need to consider what information needs to catch a reader's eye first, and what information is secondary.
- ✔ A hint from my career as a designer: When designing a poster where the structure and the hierarchy of the information is so very important for instant readability, I write down the words "What," "Where," and "When." Using these three words as anchors, I then start structuring the copy in the layout. Very quickly the information falls into a logical and comprehensible sequence.
- ✔ Whichever of the five text files you choose for this exercise, the procedure of structuring and giving the copy hierarchy will be imperative to your final layout.
- ✔ 4. Once you have structured your text on the page, transform it into your chosen typeface whose characteristics you have decided help to reinforce and enhance the mood and tone of the information.
- ✔ Remember, you must choose a typeface that reflects the mood and tone of the copy. This is both a very exciting and daunting moment, as there are so many typefaces out there to choose from.
- ✔ An interesting fact you should consider is that a reader can already be influenced before actually reading the text by the sight of the typeface.
- ✔ 5. Apply different sizes and weights or variants of the typography as needed to convey your determined structure and hierarchy. Notice in my example above that I used a light style, a regular style, and a bold style, and a range of sizes as appropriate. Do not use any special effects, filters, shadows, graphics, or additional typefaces. These will only distract from the task at hand.
- ✔ Save your completed piece as a JPEG named with the type of information you used, for example, floorplan.jpg.
jul 7 2011 ∞
jul 19 2011 +
jul 19 2011 +