Design for impact, readability, audience
Since the beginning of this article, if you're still reading, we've covered a lot of ground -- and not even scratched the surface of how to write, design and implement good headlines.
While we summarize, observe the poster pictured at right. No, it's not by Bill Bernbach -- but I want you to think about the lessons as applied to the gulp of typography in this poster. It's an ad for Epson printers, targeting graphic designers -- who, of course, should know who Bill Bernbach is, right? In a moment I'll quiz your expertise on what should change, what's right about it and what's wrong with it.
First, Alex White discussed a little bit about
Design's function, and how its primary goal to convey meaning. He emphasized the importance of a harmonious marriage within the triad of design elements *typography, *image and *space. Always remember this Alexism:
Make people look and then convey content effortlessly. These purposes are seemingly at odds, because attention-getting design must be interpretive and slightly abstract. On the other hand, effortless content requires legibility.
Then Alex lead us through some exercises revolving around Typographic Craftsmanship using the extraordinary creativity and skills of Herb Lubalin to illustrate how you cannot rely on default.
If you only use ready-made materials, you are sure to have results that look like everyone else's. It is like cooking with prepared, frozen food: How special can your cooked results be? Possibly good, but certainly limited by the ingredients you use.
Make your design elements from scratch and you will surely have distinctive results.
The last word on type craftsmanship is this: If, after careful consideration and thoughtful adjustment, it looks right, it is.
Next, Alex demonstrated How space affects typography and why it is so important in channeling the reader where the designer wants them to go. We learn about symmetry and classic centered alignment.
Design is simple. From there we continued looking at headline design beginning with a premium example the "Think Small" ad. The brilliance of Bill Bernbach brought these lessons in an ad which would change the advertising industry for ever. A tiny photo, and two tiny words launched a whole new era in the way Americans thought about their car.
We also walked through a 5-step exercise word-smithing and rearranging the headline of another popular ad to demonstrate to ourselves how typography affects reader eye-flow, and meaning. This brought home the Alexism that there's a a huge difference between something wrong and something right in your designs.
From there, we enlisted the well known expertise of Ronnie Lipton, author of "The Practical Guide to Information Design" to help walk use through Designing for your audience -- designing effective headlines based on how we say it as opposed to what it looks like.
We played some tricks with headlines, line breaks, alignment and learned about caps and punctuation in headlines which brought us to where we are now.
What did you learn?
When you open the Epson Poster and ask what did they do right?
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What do you see first?
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Where does your eye go next?
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Does it fulfill all the criteria we've learned?
?
What would you change?
?
Open the poster page now
Click on the poster in that window and you'll see the ONLY change I would make to the design. Everything else seems to be in perfect harmony.
Why did I change what I did? You noticed right away, didn't you. If you read it out loud, then you got it right away. Agree? Disagree? Why did I change it?
Write me and tell me what YOU would do!
Thanks for reading
Be a better graphic designer.
Seriously folks, if you are serious about becoming a formidable force in your design arena, then Ronnie Lipton's excellent Guide To Information Design will arm you to investigate and understand how to wordsmith your graphic designs. But don't get me wrong -- it's not just about headlines. Ronnie takes you carefully through the whole gamut of visual and literary communications like charts, presentations, running editorial in magazines, books, brochures and virtually any application that infolves information.
Then, you absolutely must pick up Alex White's Advertising Design and Typography. This latest book rounds out the quintessential library on graphic design using type and typography along with:
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Type In Use explains the principales of designing pages from one-page brochures to magazines.
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Thinking In Type: The Practical Philosophy Of Typography
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The Elements of Graphic Design: Space, Unity, Page Architecture, and Type .
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