Three Points and Question - Week Six

1. "Tracking" alters letterspacing paragraph by paragraph. "Kerning" alters letterspacing between specific character pairs. "Ligatures" are conjoined letter pairs.

2. The type must be an integral part of the composition for design to work effectively. If the type is altered or removed, the piece should fall apart.

3. (Maitra and Goswami) The goals of design often vary drastically among different cultures. For instance, in this reading, the American design goal was to produce a document that included clear and comprehensible material; conversely, the Japanese document was structured only to impress the intended reader. Their goals were to focus on ambiguity and aesthetics.

Question: Are Americans so lazy and used to having everything hand-fed to them that anything that challenges them mentally is immediately deemed frivolous and/or confusing? While this article takes a different approach to address this question, have our "right now" philosophies weakened our creative abilities? Do we use the speedy demands of the business world as a way to hide our intellectual shortcomings? It is amazing to note how a harmless study about design can expose so many other issues.