Design Practice: Type workshop 3

We began by reviewing what we had covered in the last workshop and looked at the exercises we were set to complete for this session.

This time we were moving on from the word and the sentence to the paragraph.

Exercise 1

We were given a paragraph and instructed to make it fill the column as closely as possible. After this was done we had to copy that column of text and lower the point size by 1 whole point and then make the text fill the column again by changing the leading. This was repeated twice after this like a sequence.

Comparing the now different body copies we had to determine which we prefer in terms of comfort, readability and how easy it is to look at (remember looking is not the same as reading). It was a toss up between the 2nd and 3rd column but we decided on the 2nd.

This was being judged by what we could see on screen which isn't always best. If your working with layouts for printed media then print it and see how it looks and how you react to the leading and point size comparisons. For example, if it were for a novel then it would be a smaller point and larger leading but if it was a magazine it would be a larger one. These are only fractional differences but they make all the difference.

Adding leading makes it more readable but lots makes it lose its presence as a body of text.

Here we looked at the column width and how board or narrow the text can be without it being difficult to read.

The narrowest column isn't very pleasant to read because its break the sentences up too much and they become just a word standing a lone or a few small words. In a juxtaposition to this the broadest column of text makes your eyes travel a long way across the page to read a line which can have a negative effect on the reader.

The two centre columns are both good in their own rights. The left would be good for high end tabloids that use bigger words and the one on the right would be acceptable for a novel.

Changing the font will also change the size of the text because each individual typeface has its own 'X' height which we learnt about last year in one of Lorenzo's seminars.

Removing the line spacing makes the text harder to look at. It doesn't make you want to read the text. Spaces between paragraphs is always the more appealing option for the reader but sometimes having none has to be the option.

Function - changing the indent on all the paragraphs - TYPE/ PARAGRAPH/ ADJUST THE INDENT

This is the text with a 3mm indent.

RULE - you never use line spacing and an indent

RULE - you never indent using the TAB key

The TAB key is good for info graphics and getting exact measurements between text, words or symbols.

1 TAB is equal to 1cm.

This exercise was about editing the layout of the text to incorporate an image. We could change the size of the image and the point size of the text if we wanted to.

Text before image.

Text after image.

Progressing from this we had to make the text fit and make the image as big as we could. Some people turned the image so it was portrait and some peoples weren't as big as the kept it within the boarders. The ones that did this had much more attractive layouts as the image worked better with the type. Also this required us to change the font to one with a smaller 'X' height to condense it.