Fonts & Styles

Font research is important for this project because I have to pick fonts that are legible by a wide demographic, youngsters who may have only just started reading and may struggle with it. Also, when the demographic spreads across the world, there are going to languages the site is written in that uses the same font, therefore the site needs to be something that can be understood in all languages by very young children.

That said the main site wide font can be a simple sans-serif font, that matches the designs of large organisations like Apples’ ‘San Fransisco’ font and Googles’ ‘Open Sans’ font.

Looking through googles’ fonts featured at (https://fonts.google.com/) there are actually a lot of appropriate looking typefaces, it is simply a case of picking one.

The reason for using Googles’ fonts?

• These fonts are great because they are completely free to use, and require no liscensing whatsoever and are completely unlimited with no caps on usage.
• Cross platform rendering is fully supported by Googles’ content delivery network meaning font stability in different browsers and devices works perfectly.
• Loading times are much faster since they are compressed and are much more lightweight than self-hosted and Typekit fonts.

After the site wide font it is important to consider the other fonts that can be used to enhance the look and feel of the site. This is something I discussed in my design infleunces with the styled tourist guidebook of Amsterdam (https://akbrodie.wordpress.com/2016/12/09/design-inspiration-2/). Therefore I think it is important to look at some of the popular fonts in different countries that relate to the heritage of that country.

The system font I have chosen is based on a few different things, after a little research I found that a font that is popular with my target audience is comic sans because it big rounded and fun as seen below;

The problem with this font is that it has been rated one of the worst fonts to use in a design. Therefore I had to look a new, updated alternative version that has the same impact on the target audience. I managed to find the font ‘Varela Round’ which has a similar style;

The problem with this font is when it shown very small it seems too bunched together in terms of the letter spacing, therefore it is important to increase the kerning size;

With the site font sorted out, I was left with searching for the remaining fonts for the specific countries around the world that would require their own font to introduct the country. This was a reasonably easy process as I would find fonts that relate to the specific countries and then use that research to pick the specific ones. This can be seen by the the font examples below;

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Font Research

Legibility in fonts is the most important factor, but next comes style. I have to use a combination of fonts to create the style I want, in this case I need to use a font that matches the magical experience I want the user to have. While the font needs to be mystical it also needs to be modern and user friendly. I have have made sure that these fonts are from google fonts to help loading time and accessibility. Below are the fonts that were tested;

Title

After discussion with the target audience the font “Tangerine” won by far, this is the font I will use.

Content

After discussion with the target audience the font “Libre Baskerville” won by far, this is the font I will use

References;
http://www.fonts.com/content/learning/fontology/level-4/fine-typography/legibility

Choosing the font

Legibility in fonts is the most important factor, but next comes style. I have to use a combination of fonts to create the style I want, in this case I need to use a font that matches whales themselves. The fonts need to be bold and stands out, showing its dominance while showing it’s gentle side. For this reason, I have chosen to research sans-serif fonts, using thinner fonts for the titles and a slightly thicker font for the body. I will use a Lorem Ipsum Preview of the font and then test the fonts  for legibility with the target audience. Below are the fonts that were tested;
Title

After discussion with the target audience the font “Couture” won by far, this is the font I will use.

Content

After discussion with the target audience the font “Sansation” won by far, this is the font I will use

References;
http://www.fonts.com/content/learning/fontology/level-4/fine-typography/legibility

Logo Evaluation

For my logo design I knew it was important to hit certain criteria, a lot of which I was not aware of when I first started the course, therefore I knew it was important to research before I even designed any logos whatsoever. While I was designing the logo for myself, this was excellent because I know the needs of the client (myself) better than anyone else. For me, the most important part was to advertise myself as a luxury design brand, this would have significant impact of the way clients considered me and my work, it would also impact how much I could charge. I learnt by researching colour and current luxury brands certain things I needed to do create a luxury style branding. Once I had completed my initial mockups, I created computer versions and removed the ones I thought that were not appropriate, I made sure that my logo worked in black and white as I had learnt this was very important in design, next I added colour to the logos and decided between the remaining two which meant I was left with my final design which had meaning behind it. Next I added specific details to further enhance the meaning of the logo, I used the fibonacci sequence which I had researched to make smaller adjustments to the layout of the logo, and finally changed the font to create the logo I was finally happy with.

For me the most important aspect of my design was the research stage, not only did it allow me to form a meaning for the logo but also allowed me to be certain my logo was following the correct stages to get to the perfect end result. At the time I thought that colour was the most important element to the logo and I chose purple because it represented luxury, I didn’t realise at the time I was making a choice not only for the logo but for all future branding I produced. Equally, this is probably because I was focusing on the end result of creating a logo rather than the overall branding of my image.

For me, a useful idea came from my research about luxury branding and how by mixing serif and sans-serif fonts enabled me to appear to be a much higher quality designer. Initially I felt uncertainty as to whether it would work in my logo but once I started to play around with the design in Illustrator I started get a much better feel for it. By using this font scheme I have significantly changed the appearance of my logo and it now targets the audience.

I have learnt that that research and initial design design stages are the most important to the logo to ensure it has the appeal you desire. Colour and fonts are second most important, and I believe you can’t go too far wrong if you spend a lot of time on these stages. If I was to do this again though, I would try to re-imagine the the two lower sections within the logo that represent my competition because when printed, they are not as visible as it is on the screen.

Negative & Positive Space

The use of negative space in modern day design can really improve the way it is perceived by its user. It is a flat simple way of designing that still allows the user to easily understand what is going on in the image. It has been used in art for years, and an early example would be Rubin’s Vase, an optical illusion which allows the viewer decide what they see.

In modern days, it has excellent use in logo and web design.  It allows you to create multiple ways to view the same content, but also uses the blank space to emphasise its content, as you can see here in some excellent examples;

In logo design it can also help give the logo additional meaning it wouldn’t otherwise have, as you can see in some of these examples;

Positive space is the actual object whereas the negative space is the space around that. In design if you mask each space in black and white, so the object stands out and then you flip it around, it allows you see the same image in a new perspective. You can see what I mean here;

By being generous with the amount of space that you give objects within a design you allow them to breathe makes them much more defined and eye catching, and the flow of content will progress much easier, and it will allow the user to be much more engaged.

This can even be used in type with things like line height and letter spacing, as you can see above there are clear differences with the way you layout type.
References;

Art
http://www.creativebloq.com/art/art-negative-space-8133765
http://tangyauhoong.com
http://tangyauhoong.com/portfolio/the-art-of-negative-space/

logos
http://www.boredpanda.com/negative-space-logos/

positive and negative space
http://thevirtualinstructor.com/positive-and-negative-space.html
http://artinspired.pbworks.com/w/page/13819678/Positive%20and%20Negative%20Space


http://www.photographymad.com/pages/view/understanding-and-using-negative-space-in-photography
http://www.sitepoint.com/a-solid-understanding-of-negative-space/

http://images.cpcache.com/merchandise/514_400x400_NoPeel.jpg?region=name:FrontCenter,id:33120471,w:16

The future of Web Design

A website is designed to be a centre of information for businesses, indivuals and marketing purposes. Mostly websites are there top create action from the user, whether thats to purchase, share information, visit their pysical store or even use the service they provide. It must become easier for users to understand how a website works and how to use it. This will be done by making sites like their print counterparts by using full advantage of the technology that is available. Becoming interactive, using sharing for easy marketing and pageless designs for simplistic use. Many people try to second guess what the market is doing but given I am studying a three year course not only do I need to stay current and research what media is doing now, but by the time I finish my course some of the design elements will be dated and looked down upon. Therefore it is vital that I constantly try and work out where the Internet is heading, and use that to my advantage to create work that incomparable to anything else that is available at the moment. Audiences loose interest very easily and the average attention span is on average 7-10 minutes, online users spend a lot less time and will simple move on to the next site if they do not find the information they are looking for. People do not want to spend time reading a lot of information of a website and a 2013 study carried out by The National Center for Biotechnology Information, U.S. National Library of Medicine, The Associated Press discovered that users won’t read all the text regardless how many words A website that contains less than 111 words the user will read 49% of the text on average, this is a moderately small ammount of text in comparison to the average webpage that contains about 600 words on average, the user usually only then read about 28% of the text and then spend a further 4 seconds for 100 words on a page. This indicates that webites are doing themselves a disservice by creating a page with lots of text. Through other research I have conducted tht is available on my blog, white space with less text is key. While our attention span last for about 7-10 minutes on average, you can guve users a ‘break’ from your content, allowing their attention span to ‘reset’. While you don’t want users to take a break from your site, it might be easier and more intuitive to include a form of break on the site. In terms of being in a presentation where you address your audience pysically, you can ask questions, do something interactive, tell stories or move on to a new topic. While some of this is an alien concept to using a website, I think that taking advantage of the information I have just researched and implementing it in a site in a new, user-friendl way may capture the audiences attention for longer periods of time. Another interesting and key factor in creating a website would be to allow users to understand the website as soon as they visit the site without scrolling or clicking anything, ‘Above tthe fold’ is a phrase used for the area that users see before they scroll. Jakob Neilsen noted in 2006 that 77% of users do not scroll on a website and only 22% actually reach the bottom, this means something is going wrong with current design of websites. It would be considered important, given the facts, that summary of the page and its contents is provided above the fold. Benifits of pageless websites are that they can created with responsive or adaptive formatting meaning they’re much easier to use on a range of different devices. They are less common and leave a better impression on the user, making it something thy will want to share through word of mouth. Tell a story,, following a timeline down of a ficticious character that needs his/her roof fixing. water drop starts leaking through the roof, follow the waterdrop through the house, following the steps as you go, explaining the services. A visual journey that takes the user from the problem to the solution.

References:

http://www.dtelepathy.com/blog/design/8-reasons-why-pageless-design-is-the-future-of-the-web

http://www.statisticbrain.com/attention-span-statistics/

http://www.mrmediatraining.com/2012/08/23/how-many-minutes-is-the-audiences-attention-span/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Above_the_fold http://firstresponsive.com/pageless-design-future-web-design/

http://www.google.com/nexus/5/ http://www.sequence.co.uk/media/278589/fowd.jpg