Legibility and Tone of voice
Legibility
Within visual communication there are a number of factors that have to be considered when producing a piece of work. After research and going through the design process you will have a final concept to be produced, and one of the most important things to think about through out this is that the final outcome is legible. Weather it is a magazine cover, a form or a sign post the most important thing is that the information you are trying to communicate is legible and comes across successfully; When working with text is important to think about the size of the text as large chunks of very large or very small text can be hard to read; The colour’s used need to be thought out as well because certain colour’s are hard to read such as yellow on white; When images are being combined with text this can sometimes obscure the who legible the piece is; and the surface the piece is on can effect its legibility eg: computer screens differ from paper. This book cover (bellow) designed by Jamie Keenan, is in my opinion a good example of good legibility combined with creative design. The title and the authors name are in the largest text size, with the quote in the middle in a much smaller text, meaning that you read the more important information first and are immediately informed about the most important information. He has also incorporated the text with an image successfully without detracting from its legibility, partly because the bright red used for the text contrasts with the pale skin colour. there is also no surplus information that isn’t necessary to detract from the important parts.
Another important thing to bare in mind when designing a piece of visual communication is the concept of visual hierarchy. This is the order of importance of the different parts of information within the product you are designing, and how you make it so the audience read or see them in the order you intended. Size, colour, font, type, layers, weight and contrast all effect the visual hierarchy of a piece. To show this in greater detail I have looked at the advertising poster for the film Pulp Fiction (pictured). Here the title of the film is in the largest size text and in a bright yellow which contrast’s with the red back ground all contributing to making it stand out the most compared to the other information on the page. This means that you look at it first which is what the designer had intended because it is the most important piece of information. The second part that I looked too was the image as it takes up the largest part of the page but being in darker colour’s you don’t tend to see it first. After this I would argue that the list of actors in the film would be third in the hierarchy of this piece. The colour yellow used for the text contrasts well with the image but it is in large block of text which makes it less legible and as a result the audience would tend to look at it after the other parts of the poster.
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