Chapter 8 Text

Chapter 8 was all about text and how important text is. It can be the make or break point in anything you do. The font and color is extremely important. The book says text is the visual representation of intellectual thought as expressed though human language system. Typography is the art of designing and arranging type. It is important that your text is legible and readable for your audience or viewers. If it is hard to read or understand the text viewers will not continue to read what you are saying no matter how important it is.

Bold typefaces increase the width of the stroke and the visual weight of the regular roman letter form. The letter form, serifs and character spacing of boldface type are redesigned to accommodate the increase in stroke thickness so letters have adequate center form. Center from is the white space between and within them.

There are several kinds of typefaces. They are classified into two main groups depending on whether or not they contain serifs, and those groups can be dived in many ways:

• Serif type faces: there are six main groups Black-letter, Humanist, Old Style, Transitional, Modern, and Slab Serif. These are the industry standards for body that is printed in most newspapers, books, and magazines.
• San Serif: this means “without”. They are referred to as Gothic or grotesque.  It is used to emboss pages for blind readers. They are mainly used in text headings and titles.
• Decorative: there add a mood or emotion to the text. They have some personality. They draw attention.
• Script: these are the easiest letter forms to categorize because they so clearly attempt to emulate the cursive style handwriting. They are used for commercial patterns.
• Symbol and special characters: the purpose of this is to use symbols that are not found on your key pad.

Font styles are also, extremely important. they add emphasis to keywords, headings, or phrases. If you emphasize too many text elements at once the design will appear cluttered.   There are several different font styles like faux, italics, boldface, condescend, all caps, small caps, underline and strike through. They mean and look exactly what they say. Your font size is important not to have it too big or small. It really depends on what you are doing. Normally you want your title or heading to be in a larger font that they body. Also, color is key, you need to make sure they color of font works with the background. You also, need to make sure it can be clearly read and the color is appropriate for you trying to say.

A few tips:

1. Less is more, this means sometimes less words make more of statement. People are lazy and don’t want to read but so much when what could be said in three sentences is typed out as ten.
2. Make sure your typeface can convey attitude, emotion and personality.
3. Make sure your spacing is centered and correct.
4. Make sure your colors are appropriate and easily read.