Look at the four words on the left and say them out loud. Go on, really — read it aloud. Clearly pronounce the first, second, third and fourth word. Then you may continue to the next paragraph. Go on, I’ll wait…
Good. Now how many of you failed to notice that the last word is not a name, but a regular word? Yes, the first three are names, but the last is a simple adjective. If you ended up pronouncing it incorrectly, you should be ashamed of yourself. Or maybe not, everyone does it.
1They exist everywhere. Plagued with holes, awry baselines, and font weights that flagrantly stick out. Tag clouds1 are the breeding grounds for uneven color. The newfound attention given to typography on the web addresses generic formats adapted from print, such as headlines and pull quotes. Since tag clouds were invented by the internet, there’s no original model to adapt. What designers and developers resort to are the possibilities of CSS. For years we’ve cherished the great strides the web has made for typography, but silently accept the clumsy aesthetics of its limitations. Doing so has produced messy, uncontrolled tag clouds. Continue…
I’ve always been a fan of the Trademarks of Chermayeff & Geismar. Looking at their logo designs in detail confirms the effectiveness of a golden typographic rule. When mixing type with imagery, choose letters with qualities that best complement the image. Sticking with the defaults, or using your favorite typefaces without considering the image it’s attached to is undesign. In order for typography to support the image, we have to consider the image’s form. This includes paying attention to the image’s angles, weight, color, and expressiveness.
Continue…