Lilo is a professional Website Design and Web Development company, based in London UK with offices in Cape Town, South Africa and more recently Sydney, Australia. We are a multidisciplinary agency, delivering expert and cost effective solutions that will meet a variety of your web development and website design requirements.
Typography in Web Design:
A very important but often underplayed element in website design is web typography. Typography itself is as old as the earliest writing systems and has since developed into a very specialised field.
Typography originated after the invention of printing from movable type in the mid 15th century and has come along way since then. Today we find a large number of typefaces on the web.
How you approach typeface in your design, will either enhance or diminish the visual impact of your website. Function and aesthetics are intrinsic in web design and how well your design works is just as important as how it looks.
Creative uses for typeface in web design were limited until recently. Today’s new operating systems have made it possible for website designers to move away from the limitations of using standard system fonts.
Scalable Inman Flash Replacement, better known as sIFR text are giving many website designers creative leeway. In simple terms, sIFR text is a flash rendering technique whereby designers can replace on-screen text elements with flash equivalents. In order to display correctly on someone’s web browser, sIFR requires the following: JavaScript and a Flash plug-in.
sIFR allows website headings, pull-quotes and other elements to be styled in whatever font the designer chooses. It is Search engine friendly and will display the website content as text and not an image.
The web is saturated with tips on website design and typography. Here are a few tips that can help you with the choice and placement of your typeface in web design.
Space:
Take note of the line spacing/ leading that you give your text. The space between your words will impact the readability of your copy.
Colour
Consider the colour of your design and choose the colour of your text accordingly. The colour of your text should neither overpower your design nor be consumed by it.
Font Size:
Consider the theme and style of your web design and choose the font size accordingly. Certain typefaces have been designed as small fonts and will therefore not have the same effect if it is too big.
Take into account that your text size should be readable to different users who are making using different browsers and technologies. Don’t make your text too small or too large.
Legibility
Take your user into account. The emphasis in web design today is on user-centric design. Remember that your website is there to communicate information. The objective is to encourage people to read the information on your site.
Too many fonts
Don’t use too many fonts throughout your website, rather make small adjustments to the existing font. This will help you to maintain a sense of continuity throughout your design. We suggest you use two types of font at most.
Font-smoothing
Any windows operating system lower than vista, does not apply “font-smoothing” as a default setting. This could radically change how the viewers see your text.
Lilo is a professional Website Design and Web Development company, based in London UK with offices in Cape Town, South Africa and more recently Sydney, Australia. We are a multidisciplinary agency, delivering expert and cost effective solutions that will meet a variety of your web development and website design requirements.
Less Is More When It Comes To Typography In Brochures
Typography is an often overlooked aspect of graphic design. The use of fonts, the style of paragraphs and contrast in sizes between body copy, headlines and subheads will all shape the overall feel of a document, and will make a significant difference to its success as a marketing tool.
One of the common problems with graphic design, is that effects are applied to type in an effort to make the document “stand out”, without the designer realizing that it actually works against them.
With the average person being exposed to around 7,500 marketing messages per week, your main objective is to make sure that the typography adds to the overall eye-appeal of the piece. After all, the last thing you want to do is create a document that looks like it will be hard to read.
One of the best ways to increase eye-appeal is to limit the mix of fonts to two (maximum three if you really push it) within a document. If you use more, it begins to look messy, with different fonts competing for attention. If you do this, there is a risk that people will put off reading it ‘until later’ – and we all know that ‘later’ never comes. Clean and easy on the eye is ALWAYS a safe approach.
Another key point is to stick to convention, unless there is a GOOD reason for not doing so. By convention, I mean the way people EXPECT to read. For example, while ragged left may make a document look different or artistic, if the eye has to make large jumps to find the beginning of each line, it makes it very difficult for people to deal with.
People are used to starting each line at the same level, so don’t make them work unnecessarily hard to figure out a new way of doing things.
Keeping the body copy directly beneath each sub-head also helps people see what belongs where. If the subhead and the copy have a line space between them, it isn’t clear that the copy ‘belongs’ to the subhead above it.
Lastly, make sure you give your reader a clear start and finish point. Lead them THROUGH the copy, so that they will read it all, easily and comfortably. Put the key benefits and advantages of the product or service you are marketing up front, and design the brochure so that they get priority and people see them first.
People must know what to do to take the next step and obtain the benefits on offer. So, the finishing point should be a strong call to action.
If you are looking for more information about graphic design in Brisbane Jerry Crockford and his team can help. Find other unique graphic design articles.
Tags: advertising, Artwork, brochure, design, flyer, format, graphic design, layout, Marketing, Typography
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12.31.10 | Posted in graphic design | Comments Off
Balance As The Basis Of Design
When thinking about good design, people who develop plans on a regular basis know that the best way to conceive one is to break down the problem into its simplest terms and subject it to analysis. The general concept may emerge that balance is perhaps the most important element in considering what defines great design. Symmetry, or balance, is a general unifying principle of nature. In the planning of a product or a piece of art, balance is the key to quality.
The mark of a well designed product is how well it performs the purpose for which it is intended. Perhaps the easiest way to ensure that it functions well is to stick to the basics and what one might refer to as the simplicity principle. While the pleasing outward appearance of a product is important to those who develop them, its also important to keep in mind that the simpler the better usually applies.
Applying the same general approach based on reducing any planning process to the context of form and function may work equally well for nearly any professional aspiring to work at the top of their game. Working from such a perspective should help to keep in balance the tendency of some to favor the outward appearance over functionality. That balance may determine how well something works.
When form and function are in balance, an object comes closest to that state of being an ideal, or approaching perfection. In psychology, this concept is stated as gestalt, which refers to a closed system in which all the components work in an optimum manner, in short when everything is in balance.
The concept of balance is also related to that of harmony. When people think of something being in harmony, that is essentially another way of saying that its in a state of equilibrium, or balance. One is probably reminded of music upon hearing the word harmony, and the fact that the wave lengths of harmonious sounds are mathematically proportional supports the assertion that form and function in balance produce a thing of beauty.
Taking a lesson from the most common examples of nature, symmetry seems to be the rule of how things are structured. Nearly everything in nature from animals to molecular structure are based on the principle of symmetry, which is identical to balance.
The more one studies their environment, they should find many examples to support the claim that balance is the essence of good design. After all, experts in aesthetics contend that what is interpreted as beauty is, in fact, symmetry, or, in a word, balance.
Finding camisetas that suit your casual style is not hard when you know where to look. The clever writings on camisas make you smile and sometimes laugh out loud.
Tags: art, creative, design, graphic design, Graphics, ideas, Illustration, inspiration, Photoshop, portfolio, Typography, web design
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01.8.10 | Posted in graphic design | Comments Off
Typography in Web Design:
Typography in Web Design:
A very important but often underplayed element in website design is web typography. Typography itself is as old as the earliest writing systems and has since developed into a very specialised field.
Typography originated after the invention of printing from movable type in the mid 15th century and has come along way since then. Today we find a large number of typefaces on the web.
How you approach typeface in your design, will either enhance or diminish the visual impact of your website. Function and aesthetics are intrinsic in web design and how well your design works is just as important as how it looks.
New liberty in Web Design: sIFR Text
Creative uses for typeface in web design were limited until recently. Today’s new operating systems have made it possible for website designers to move away from the limitations of using standard system fonts.
Scalable Inman Flash Replacement, better known as sIFR text are giving many website designers creative leeway. In simple terms, sIFR text is a flash rendering technique whereby designers can replace on-screen text elements with flash equivalents. In order to display correctly on someone’s web browser, sIFR requires the following: JavaScript and a Flash plug-in.
sIFR allows website headings, pull-quotes and other elements to be styled in whatever font the designer chooses. It is Search engine friendly and will display the website content as text and not an image.
Important Typeface Tips:
The web is saturated with tips on website design and typography. Here are a few tips that can help you with the choice and placement of your typeface in web design.
Space:
Take note of the line spacing/ leading that you give your text. The space between your words will impact the readability of your copy.
Colour
Consider the colour of your design and choose the colour of your text accordingly. The colour of your text should neither overpower your design nor be consumed by it.
Font Size:
Consider the theme and style of your web design and choose the font size accordingly. Certain typefaces have been designed as small fonts and will therefore not have the same effect if it is too big.
Take into account that your text size should be readable to different users who are making using different browsers and technologies. Don’t make your text too small or too large.
Legibility
Take your user into account. The emphasis in web design today is on user-centric design. Remember that your website is there to communicate information. The objective is to encourage people to read the information on your site.
Too many fonts
Don’t use too many fonts throughout your website, rather make small adjustments to the existing font. This will help you to maintain a sense of continuity throughout your design. We suggest you use two types of font at most.
Font-smoothing
Any windows operating system lower than vista, does not apply “font-smoothing” as a default setting. This could radically change how the viewers see your text.
| Posted in Design | Comments Off