Explain designing basics.

 

Explain designing basics.

a. Typography – is the art and technique of designing, setting and arranging type. It is used to some degree in all written communication. It can be complicated but understanding some simple concepts and rules can result in solid typography and help make good graphic design great.

b. Measure – refers to the horizontal length of a column of type. The length of a line affects readability because readers’ eyes become fatigued if it has to repeatedly read long lines of type. This is why newspapers and magazines are often split up into columns of text.

c. Serif or Sans Serif? Serifs are the small lines or hooks at the end of characters in fonts such as Times, Garamond or Georgia. Sans serif fonts such as Arial, Helvetica or Futura do not have serifs. Generally, serif fonts are used for large bodies of text. It is thought that the serifs help make the letters more distinctive, recognizable and readable than sans serif.

d. Size – font size is the height of typeface that measures from the top of the tallest ascender to the bottom of the longest descender (for example top of ‘b’ and bottom of ‘p’). A decent font size is 9 – 12 points, depending on the audience. It should be noted that two different fonts at the same font size don’t necessarily appear the same size.

e. Tracking – is the adjustment of the horizontal space between a group of letters in a block type. Tracking may need to be adjusted depending on the length of the lines of type. Loose tracking is preferred for wide columns whereas tight tracking is better fir narrow columns.

f. Kerning – is the adjustment of the horizontal space between a pair of characters. It puts the same amount of space between a group of characters but certain letter combination’s may appear too close to too far apart.

g. Leading – is the amount of vertical space between lines of type. Tight leading makes it difficult for the reader to find the start of the following line of type which is particularly noticeable in long lines of type.

h. Alignment – refers to how multiple lines of text are aligned. The four four basic typographic alignments are flush left, flush right, full justification and center alignment.

i. Hyphenation – breaks up words that cannot fully fit at the end of a line of type. Hyphens should only be placed between consonants to avoid awkward word fragments. It should be kept to minimum, never used on names or two consecutive lines.

j. Paragraphs – are a sentence or a group of sentence about a common topic. Indents and/or line breaks are the most common methods of separating them.

k. Orphans – is a single word or a short line at the left end of the paragraph, resulting in excessive white space between paragraphs.

l. Widow – is a single word or short line at the beginning or at the end of a column, separating it from the rest of the paragraph.

m. Emphasis – refers to changing the style of certain words in order to emphasize them from the rest of the text. Examples are bold, caps, small caps, size, color and italics.

n. Color – It can attract attention, emphasize, organize content, create a mood and help readability.

o. Hierarchy – refers to the level of importance given to information by using different fonts, size, tracking, color, weight or style. It is used to separate different levels of headings and sub headings.