Web Design is 95% typography

While reading Web design is 95% typography it made me have some personal questions on web design and how we interact with it. In the article she says 95% of information on the web is written language. One point I tried to remember that even though up to 95% of information is written that does not count for what is widely on the web. Web designers today have to take that into account while also thinking about ads, images, videos, etc. One part of the web is to get the viewer to engage into the information and want to read, and after they are engaged to be able to read the information comfortably. The article talked about how this applied to informational graphics, and overall text context. Just like they said in the lecture last week "simple is better" because people are overloaded with all the information coming out at them. This is an important factor to think about when creating a website. In the past week, in all classes, we have talked about the importance of creating an experience for the audience, and a positive one at that. By going back to the design principles, and really narrowing in on what will be the most comfortable for the viewer to see is how we, as designers, get that positive experience. Minimizing clicks, having some sort of navigation down (for the viewer to understand where they are in the site, because the internet never stops) all just a few of the ways we can approach this. Some great points that they made that were said over and over was, text point size, color contrast (because of the screen ) and typography is not about choosing fonts. Since the web is limited on how many typefaces it can use this is definitely something to think about.

Excercises

Example of an Article in depth

Example of the home sports page

Example of an external link relating to sports

Advanced Typography

For my concept map, I really wanted to just focus on the activities and ways we could interact with the high school students. I tried to think of the four (interactions, settings, artifacts, and participants) ways this symposium will be focused around. However, I believe that I might have done it not the "correct" way. I should have included the high school students within the map, perhaps their age even, because that is relevant to what we will design for them. I also should have included the more of the actual artifacts that would be used, such as print (post cards, posters), I did include videos, but maybe a more in detail of the videos, animations, beginnings to movies.

Making the concept map was a challenge in the beginning. I made a couple different analog ones. I wanted to get down exactly what the content was before hand. (While looking through "Thinking with Type" they said as an easy tip is to get down your content most of the way, and let the "drop shadows, etc" be one of the last parts because strong designs, are based around strong content" While designing my concept map this was something I tried to think about. The content that would go in, and how making a grid structure might help the viewer to see the information. I also gave distinctions between point size and color to show how I wanted the viewer to see difference in hierarchy.