11/20 class prompt on directions from readings

thinking with type: Lupton’s explanation and examples of line spacing on page 83 came in quite handy when designing the brochure. Past experience told me that, often, we people design blocks of texts (be it newspaper, brochure, etc) the spacing between lines or leading tends to be manipulated when the text won’t fit. Lupton gives greater purpose to line spacing. Lines that are placed too close to one another feel cramped and are uncomfortable to the reader. Conversely, lines that are too far apart lose continuity- they don’t appear as a cohesive unit. We ran into this problem when designing the inside text of the MAPC brochure intended for conferences. Eventually, we settled upon spacing slightly larger than the standard (the standard is slightly larger than the cap height of a letter). We did this because we had a lot of text. Spacing made it feel a bit more clean and enhanced readability.

Flower and Hayes (Scenario Principle): This wasn’t one of the primary texts, but it’s important enough of a concept that it deserves a great deal of attention. Time constraints make formal usability testing of the deliverables difficult. The scenario principle does not replace usability testing, but it does help to create user-centered designs. In a nutshell, the scenario principle asks the designer to place him/herself in that of a typical user. For example, the users of the MAPC website include current/past/potential students, faculty, third party clients, etc. When designing the website, we needed to ask ourselves “what would the current students want from the website?” And the question repeats for each user group.