An hypothesis for typographical endeavours. Black or white for text to be read. Colors for links.
What about red? For white-black-red pages, red can be links. Which makes every links an emergency. Hence the need to quiet down with a touch of light blue.
What about boxes? Shades of gray. Something neutral, near the background. As long as the reader recognizes where to click, i.e. on text emphasized by colors.
Follow-up on the experiment:
www.pfff.ca
Showing posts with label design. Show all posts
Showing posts with label design. Show all posts
Design as Proof
Most of us write by gathering together. The notes gathered help the mind experiment with ideas. But to be effective, writing should limit experiments with thoughts.
Think of all the ideas in the world. All these ideas concern the world, in one way or another. If one could hold all the ideas of the world in a text, that text would be about the world.
Good writing minimizes secondary ideas and maximizes primary ideas. Trying to fit every note into a text would be the opposite of design. The power of a text resides in the concision of effect.
Poe already said that, in a way. What he did not know was that this was also what gives power to a formal proof. For a good proof, like any good creative text, needs a good design.
V. Ludics for a more powerful extension of that idea.
Think of all the ideas in the world. All these ideas concern the world, in one way or another. If one could hold all the ideas of the world in a text, that text would be about the world.
Good writing minimizes secondary ideas and maximizes primary ideas. Trying to fit every note into a text would be the opposite of design. The power of a text resides in the concision of effect.
Poe already said that, in a way. What he did not know was that this was also what gives power to a formal proof. For a good proof, like any good creative text, needs a good design.
V. Ludics for a more powerful extension of that idea.
Simple Design Rules
- Put content on every page
- The first color is white
- The second is black
- The third is red
- Never letterspace lowerspace
- Never set a lot of text type in all caps
- A cover should be a poster
- Use only one or two typefaces
- Make everything as big as possible
- Get lumpy!
Roger Black gives these ten rules in **Web Sites that Work**. They're not really his. Most have been known since Goudy, even since Gutenberg. They do not entail that other rules don't work. Only that following these rules suits well the purpose of graphical design.
In a way, writing entails design principles. White gives space. Black puts text. Paragraphs form blocks. Titles stand out. Lists are figures with words. A well-written text is good looking. Emphasis should be used sparingly. Secondary ideas should be kept to a minimum. The reader wishes to be surprised with pleasurable novelties!
So these rules can be adapted for writing. In fact, the rules could very well be expressed at the level of method. But not today. Maybe some other time.
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