- Nov 2016
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designschool.canva.com designschool.canva.com
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• Give each font a job: Your chosen fonts will need to be different enough that they create a clear visual hierarchy — showing viewers where to look and what’s important. One sans-serif and one serif font are often enough to do this effectively.
This is exactly what we've found appropriate and effective for GCCA's website. We are using sans-serif for general information while serif will highlight more important information and headers.
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Who is viewing your design may also be important. Is your audience of a certain age or demographic? Will your font choice resonate with them?
These questions should also be kept in mind while designing a website or template. As we discussed in class during our presentation, GCCA is working for the children, but that doesn't mean their audience consists of children or anyone child like. It's a serious organization that deals with state funding and law making so the design must be suitable for potential members who come from a professional background. Not all graphics should include children in them. They should also show judicial officials and businessmen who all work simultaneously to make GCCA a success.
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Where and how your design will be viewed should also figure into your font choices. For instance, a business card design will need a font that’s easily readable at a small size. Or social media graphics, which are likely to be viewed on mobile devices, would benefit from fonts that display well on screen.
As a tech writer, you should ask yourself these questions when trying to figure out what font size is appropriate for the project you are working on. On GCCA's homepage, we decided to make sure that the font on the main picture was bold and attention grabbing because we want to focus on having our audience sign up for memberships. The rest of the info on the homepage is normal, except for headers which are bold as well.
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If the characteristics the font is communicating don’t match the message of your overall design, then there will be a visual disconnect for the viewers or users of your design, and you don’t want that. When browsing fonts, it can be easy to get caught up in all the fun and interesting choices, but don’t let personal preferences get in the way; a font you think is distinctive or stylish may not be useful or appropriate for the project you’re working on.
The quote above does a great job explaining how imperative your font choices are on the overall look and feel of the website. If you get too carried away with aesthetics than you can add too much excitement to a page or the opposite effect, confusion, either way it is preventing your reader from actually being able to take in the information because of a "visual disconnect" or a design overload. Just how you can walk into a clothing store and get easily overwhelmed because it has too many trends going on at once and it's too crowded with too many different kinds of looks that you'll walk out, the same can be applied to a website. If your choice of font(s) are too much and are causing a visual disconnect, then your audience will leave before they even got a chance to read the information to retain anything from the website. It might also cause them to not want to return to the site because of some visual disconnect PTSD. In simple terms, less is more and make sure it's cohesive with the overall tone of the company.
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Font choices often set the tone for the whole design and can influence viewers’ feelings toward and interactions with your design — just like how if you were to show up at a black-tie party in your favorite threadbare t-shirt and sweatpants, people would judge you on your appearance.
Again, continuing the conversation about what fonts are appropriate for GCCA's website, it's true that certain fonts have an undertone to them and they influence or stimulate certain feelings in your readers. If the organization that you work for is more on the artsy side, than perhaps that can give you some leeway to play with script and display fonts. But for the more serious businesses like law or medical offices, I would definitely stick to simple serif text. There's a time and a place to be the center of attention by being weird and eclectic, but your client's font (in my case GCCA) isn't one of them.
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You wouldn’t wear a bathing suit to a job interview; then again, you wouldn’t want to wear a suit and tie during your vacation on the beach either. There’s an element of appropriateness to consider.
Yes! I like this analogy a lot! This goes back to what I was saying about how I wouldn't choose script or display fonts for GCCA's website because it's inappropriate. This is a serious organization that works hard to gain legal rights and government funding for childcare facilities. They cannot be turning in legal forms or own a website with frilly fonts because that's not going to help them to be taken seriously.
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4) Decorative / Display: When you hear a font categorized as decorative, display, or novelty, it all means the same thing — that font is meant to get your attention. They’re often more unusual than practical and should only be used in small doses and for a specific effect or purpose.
This font also has an aesthetic that I would stay away from when it comes to GCCA's website. Again, it just doesn't set the right tone and takes away from the ethos and logos that this organization is trying to convey. I think the best options here would be a combination of serif and san-serif because they're both more involved in the "universal design" in which GCCA isn't trying to have an artsy website, but more a site where information is easily accessible and aesthetics don't take away from the content.
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3) Script: Scripts are what we might think of as cursive- or handwriting-style fonts. They generally have connecting letters. You’ll find that script fonts come in many different styles, from elegant, to fun and casual, to hand-drawn.
Script font reminds me of Pinterest worthy thank you notes or cute headers for personal blogs or online boutiques. I wouldn't use this font specifically on GCCA's website because it doesn't set the right tone for the type of information we are dealing with. GCCA has very important state juridical matter and also legal terms, business information, etc that are all serious. Like we talked about during our presentation in class, although they deal with children, it's still a very serious organization and everything must have a professional look and feel to it and script doesn't do it here.
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Though this point is often debated, it’s commonly said that serifs make long passages (in print) easier to navigate visually, helping move your eyes along the lines of text. However, because serifs are usually small and thin, they often don’t display as well on pixel-based screens (looking distorted and “noisy” rather than clear and crisp), so many designers favor sans-serif fonts for web use, especially at small sizes.
As a technical writer, you must use a variety of fonts in order to stimulate your audience. You want to be able to help them distinguish between what certain information is more important than others. For the information that is general and isn't imperative nor irrelevant, you want to stick to a font that has a neutral undertone and serifs are great for that.
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1) Serif: Serif fonts have little “feet” or lines attached the ends of their letters. They’re generally thought to look more serious or traditional.
I can apply this article to my service learning project with GCCA because using a variety of fonts can attract readers attention to important information. When designing a website. it's imperative that we highlight certain information by changing the font in order to make the reader know that some information is more important than others, like for example GCCA's mission statement on the homepage in serif font.
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