Blog Post #4 for Monday’s reading on February 10, 2019

Reading Summary

In the video titled “Creating visual hierarchy with type”, the main principal that is taught is visual hierarchy. By using typography and appropriate amounts of space, a designer can share what is most to least important visually on a page. Typesetting is a way to establish where to begin, where to go next, and where to end when looking at a design. In the video titled “Using gestalt theory to guide layout”, the concepts of proximity, similarity, continuity, and closure are the main focus of what designs should focus on inorder to make the design easier to understand. 

Source:  Rebecca Hagen and Kim Golombisky (2013) “Using gestalt theory to guide layout” and “Creating visual hierarchy with type” 

Outside Example 

The first thing that came to mind while watching the videos was a menu from a place I ate at in tennessee. The menu was very simple and it was easy to understand. The name of the dish and the price were right next to each other and the description of the dish was right below it. The reason this menu in particular came to mind was because despite that I had never eaten there, I was able to read it and know what I wanted to eat in less than a minute. It also helped that the food was very good.  

Reading Connection

The menu from The Local Goat follows all of what was taught in the videos. It shows you what isn’t important from what section you are looking at, then to the dish names and the price, then to the dishes descriptions. The video used different font types, font sizes, and spacing to achieve this, but the menu from Local Goat mainly uses font boldness, font sizes, and spacing to achieve this. It’s continuity and proximity are what really make it work. Using similar fonts also makes it look better in my opinion.