Week 5 : Legibility & Tone of voice

ITAP  (WEEK 5)  - Integrating theory & practice

Principle 3 – Legibility

Legibility: The quality of being clear enough to read.

When designing or working with text, you must ask yourself: Is the design suitable?  and does it work? As the design can have a huge impact on whether something is legible or not. The text size, colour, font and background can all effect how text is read.

For my recent assignment of creating an online magazine, I created a double page spread that I had to think carefully about, due to the colours I was using, my text on the design was not easily read. Here is an example :

From looking at this design you can see that the text colour does not make this design legible, as it is not easy to read, this is due to the white from the background image interfering with the text colour. Due to the interference, the letter “O” in the word Broad looks like the letter “G”. As this one legible I had to change the colour of the font, to make it more suitable.

After going through a variety of colour pallets on Photoshop, I was able to find a colour, which was legible and had little interference.

This process is necessary when designing as it can influence your final outcome and can decide whether your piece of work stands out or not.  Below are a few more images of others work, which are legible and not legible.

Due to the text being so small on a poster about something important , this poster is not legible and even defines the purpose of what is being presented.

This design is not legible as the background colour clashes with the font colour, making the text not easily readable.

This poster design is legible as everything is clear to read and also the colours used go well with the design.

Principle 4 – Tone of voice

The text font and size can make a big difference on designs, but that all depends on the tone of voice being used.  The best way to describe tone of voice is by looking at different styles of text.

BIG

This text font above is an example of a tone of voice, as it is using the font style and size to match up with the written text.

 However the tone of voice does not always match up to the text written, such as the one below, but can be done on purpose to attract the viewers attention, making both ways effective.

Loud  !      à should be à L0UD !

Other good examples of tone of voice are:

HARD     ANGRY    Small      

The effect of “tone of voice” tends to be found in comic strips and  poster designs, one example I found was from Roy Lichtenstein’s work in which he uses the word “ WHAAM!” to create the feeling of sound.

Using tone of voice is a good way of grabbing the attention of a viewer , however to do this , it must be done properly using the appropriate : font , size and colour for what the message is conveying.