ideas in typography related to experience design
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Slides from my BarCamp Brighton 3 presentation.TRANSCRIPT
Photo credit: James Mosley
Ideas in typography related
to experience design
Rebecca Cottrell
Legibility: are the letters clear?
Readability: how easy is it to scan
paragraphs set in the typeface?
Context: would you set a layoff notice
in Comic Sans MS?
Photo credit: Meg Rorison
When a goblet has a base that looks too small for security, it
does not matter how cleverly it is weighted; you feel nervous
lest it should tip over. There are ways of setting lines of type
which may work well enough, and yet keep the reader
subconsciously worried by the fear of 'doubling' lines, reading
three words as one, and so forth. Now the man who first chose
glass instead of clay or metal to hold his wine was a 'modernist'
in the sense in which I am going to use that term. That is, the
first thing he asked of his particular object was not 'How should
it look?' but 'What must it do?' and to that extent all good
typography is modernist. Wine is so strange and potent a thing
that it has been used in the central ritual of religion in one
place and time, and attacked by a virago with a hatchet in
“Printing should be invisible.”
Beatrice Warde, The Crystal Goblet:
Sixteen Essays on Typography, 1955
The man who first chose glass
instead of clay or metal to hold
his wine was a 'modernist' in the
sense in which I am going to use
that term. The first thing he
asked of his particular object was not 'How should it look?'
but 'What must it do?”
the container should reveal the contents
Convention is needed in
typography in order for the brain to recognise the shape of letters
(shapes we already know and understand)
Typography
Typography
Typography
Experimental typography by
Nicolas Queffelec
The New Art notion that you can
make letters whatever shapes you like, is as foolish as the notion, if
anyone has such a notion, that you can make houses any shapes
you like. You can't, unless you live all by yourself on a desert island.
– Eric Gill
Sculptor, stonecutter, typeface designer (1882–1940)
Nokia Mobira Senator, 1982
Weight: 21 pounds
Man, c. 1487
Technology changes quickly,
people change slowly
Don Norman’s principles for designing for people
(in ‘The Design of Everyday Things’)
1) Provide a good conceptual model
- allows us to predict the effect of our actions
- mental models are formed by learning a device’s perceived
actions
2) Make things visible
- mental models also determined by interpreting its visible
structure, through visual cues
- natural mapping: taking advantage of physical analogies and
cultural standards, leads to immediate understanding
Don Norman’s principles for designing for people
(in ‘The Design of Everyday Things’)
1) Provide a good conceptual model
- allows us to predict the effect of our actions
- mental models are formed by learning a device’s perceived
actions
2) Make things visible
- mental models also determined by interpreting its visible
structure, through visual cues
- natural mapping: taking advantage of physical analogies and
cultural standards, leads to immediate understanding
Natural mapping, by which I mean taking advantage of
physical analogies and cultural standards, leads to
immediate understanding. For example, a designer can use
spatial analogy: to move an object up, move the control up.
To control an array of lights arrange the control in the
same pattern as the lights. Some natural mappings are
cultural or biological, as in the universal standard that
rising level represents more, a diminishing level less.
Similarly, a louder sound can mean a greater amount.
Amount and loudness (and weight, line length, and
brightness) are additive dimensions: add more to show
incremental increases. (Don Norman, 1989)
More informationType and Typography by Phil Baines and Andrew Haslam
Paul Renner: The Art of Typography
by Christopher Burke
Typography Papers published by Reading University
typophile.com