OUGD404 - Study Task - Grid Systems

Danny's design principles session today focused on grid systems and how they are fundamental during design processes. We looked at places they are used such as newspaper and magazines and set out to find the grid used within a newspaper page in a group of two. Grid systems may be more simple than first thought. Some of the body's of text cover only half a column and others, including pictures, spread across two columns. This occurred frequently on my chosen page so it took a number of attempts in pencil before I was clear of the grid.

OUGD403 -To kern or not to kern

"Letter spacing should not be mechanically equal but must achieve equal optical space" 
Tschischold, J.

Monospace typeface
This is where the kerning is the same between letterforms. An examples of this can be seen on typewriters.

This lecture on has vastly helped with understanding the importance of kerning. I now understand that there are different ways to kern type and that they can be chosen by what you are designing. The lecture taught me the difference between optical, metric and manual kerning and when is best to use each.

Metric
Kern pairs that are adjusted automatically due to being problematic. Such pairs of letters include: LA   P.   To   Tr   Ta   Tu   Te   Ty   Wa   WA   We   Ya   Yo

Optical
Spacing between letters is based on the shapes of the letterforms. Pairs of letters such as VA are affected.

Manual
Kerning is done by eye. You manually adjust the distance between letterforms to where you think it suits best

Kerning can effect the way type is perceived. If letters aren't at an appropriate distance from each other in a logo, the client may not approve of it and may lose the job. This is why we played Kerndown where we were to appropriately space our random letters apart from each other in conjunction with a type of shop such as a hairdressers or smoothie company.

OUGD403 - Study Task 04 -Typesetting

Todays one day brief tasked us with redesigning the menu of a takeaway company. It was essential that we looked at the typesetting of text and it's layout after having a lecture about the importance of legibility and readability within graphic design. The takeaway I chose is Gandhi's indian takeaway. They're original menu is cluttered and hard to read. The type is constantly set baldly with various sentences running over two lines creating widows. Because of this, I wanted to completely change the look and format of this menu and so I set myself the task to simplify the menu so the readability was improved.

My final design is simplistic and clearly shows all information needed on the menu. I reworked the colour pallet as I thought it reminded me more of a Chinese takeaway rather than of India. The idea of a menu isn't to confuse the reader so I decided this was important to correct. My new colour scheme better fits with the restaurant as resembles the Indian flag with the use of orange and green.

I have used two typefaces in my design process. The title font called Hong Kong Hustle is impactful and stands out however is hard to read as body text. Because of this I had to choose a typeface similar to the one used as the title but that was still legible. After placing several other typefaces into the design I decided to choose a typeface called Krungthep; a typeface based on the bustling streets of Bangkok. These two fonts worked well together and added to the Indian theme.

The names of food stands out with the companies name because of the contrast is colour so is more legible which was one of the main issues of the original design. Other features include a subtle line to separate headings from body text and an increase in size of the text showing price. I added these features as are those that I see less on normal take-away designs and more on successful ones such as seen below.

I first looked at Abdul's indian as it used to be my local takeaway and I wanted to update a menu I already knew. When visiting the website I was pleasantly surprised by how clear and modern it was. Each section of the menu had it's own specific page giving it more room and improving legibility. I took notes from this specific example and decided this would be the context of which my own menu would be placed.

I feel I have produced a successful re-design of the menu. The layout is clear and understandable with little reference to it's original. The legibility is significantly improved