Chapter 10 & Typography Readings

Madison Ultis
Typography Reading & Chapter 10
13 March 2008

I particularly liked the reading on Typography from the WebStyle Guide because it opened my eyes to different programming things that I was using in DreamWeaver, but really had little no idea about, especially that of CSS. I used that on my first website for the class, but did not really understand what it was that I was creating; I was more or less just following along with my tutorials, never thinking too much about what I was doing, just trying to get it done well. I really liked CSS because they do have complete control over the visual style of headers, paragraphs, lists, and so on. It also let me create one page, and then it was used as this sort of template for all the other pages. The marginal information and properties like that were all fixed then from this one template. So much of this article was focused on the difference between basic HTML and CSS.

It’s crazy to me how many variables there are to consider to when choosing a typeface for a site; these include size, color, and font, how you want the text to fit on a line, the justification, et cetera. It’s important to consider white space when designing a page. If the text bounces around too much and there are not any consistencies with the white space, a reader will lose his/her focus and a site may be viewed as poorly designed. The reading suggested keeping line length to approximately nine or ten words per line. This increases readability because readers do not have to work so hard to get to the next line of text. While you can use any font you’d like for your site, most operating systems have default fonts installed, and therefore, your font may not translate correctly from computer to computer. It is very important to remain consistent with these choices, also, so as not to make a site look messy. The reading suggested no more than two different fonts per site.

Chapter 10 began with the different types of file formats and what each of them meant in terms of web design. It also included information on file sizing and the importance of finding the correct size, as well as how to do that. It ended with information on thumbnail graphics and how to create those. I had some basic knowledge of most of this information from my years as Editor-in-Chief of the school yearbook/newspaper. It was important to know how to save the photos we had in order to pull them back up in the correct format; as well as know how large to bring the photo into the computer as when scanning it in. One thing I did not know much or anything about was anti-aliasing, which was also in the Typography reading. Anti-aliasing involves the smoothness of the edge of a graphic. According to the chapter, most designers in today’s world think that anti-aliased, or larger sized graphics are better for a higher quality image. I have seen my fiancé do this a few times in Photoshop when he was working on a site. He took some sort of tool, and defined the edges. This made them appear smoother to the viewer’s eye, which in turn, enhanced the page.

Overall, I thought this information was definitely some worthwhile reading. It was a combination of things that I knew either nothing about or very, very little about. I think that knowledge of all these variables will definitely help me create a much better second website, as well as however many I may create in the future.