Week 6 Ex. E

Legibility or Aesthetic?

The typographic representation uses serif type for both the title and the body. The title and body use the same typeface and are diffierentiated only by the size of the font.

Analysis

The title is attention-grabbing based on the large font size and typeface of outlining the characters. The off-putting part of this typographic design is the body.

While the use of the typeface and font size is impactful for the title, it fails otherwise for the body. The body becomes hard to read because the characters blend in with the white space of the background. The only way to make out the character is with the black outline that when looked at first glance, seems like a bunch of clumped together lines. The kerning of the characters does not help in making it easier to tell apart leter from letter. As such, it takes more cognitive effort to read the body than the title despite using the same typeface.

Furthermore, the body is centre-aligned. Without a boundary line, or hard edge as Kai mentioned during lecture, it requires more effort to keep up with the reading flow from line to line. This is not as big a problem in this typographic piece because there is no huge hanging space between the lines that will cause a reader to search for the first word of each line.

Improvements

Consider complementary typefaces. It would be more appropiate to use a sans-serif type so as to contrast the title from the body. In this case, it would also be all right to stick to a serif type but a typeface that differs greatly from the title - not in all caps nor with an outline but something simpler. Ensure that the typeface chosen helps to project the intended feeling of what the text is supposed to represent. If even the title typeface fails this check, it would be better to change it and opt for a more suitable visual representation.

The kerning should be adjusted according to the typeface chosen. Balance between having enough space between characters so that each character can be made out appropiately and having too much space such that the we don't know which letter belongs to which word.

Next, I would opt for left alignment to improve reading flow - a consistent starting point for each line. Given that the body text is not lengthy, I do not think it is necessary to paragraph the content.

Comments

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