Response to Designing for the Web and Principles and Elements of Design
The Acceptable Typefaces According to the Late Massimo Vignelli
Image from luc.devoye.org.
Key Ideas
Pixel concentration
Differences between browsers
Colour
Layout
Purpose Statement
Joshua David McClurg-Genevese covers the myriad difficulties that web designers face in regards to formatting and application of formal design principles. He introduces a complex world of ideas that are often never addressed or consciously considered by the average web user.
Points for Consideration
These articles were very eye-opening to me because, although I have more than a passing interest in art and design and am familiar with its basic tenets and themes, I was not aware of the importance of width-height ratios in web design, or of how important resolution was. The portion divulging user interface peaked my interest. I have a friend studying computer science. Through the combination of his knowledge and the provided articles, I have no doubt that I will find a wealth of new information to learn about a topic that I had never seriously discovered before.
Moving on to the application of these ideas in my own work, I have identified Proportion, Colour, and Dominance as the principles that I am most interested in learning how to apply more readily. All great buildings are built based upon some sort of modular, with the most important features calling attention to themselves in a hierarchical arrangement. My interest in architecture has no doubt informed my interest in these principles. Colour is, of course, the most difficult of the presented concepts to grapple with. So many Modernists have rejected colour as a medium of exchange by adopting either black and white or very limited, neutral colour palettes.
Conversely, and also admitted influenced my by interest in Modernist architects, I found the examples of Rhythm and Line distasteful. The “Manhattan Edition” example struck me as needlessly subdivided into too many elements. Likewise, the placement of text according to the “Subway Dream” style appears arbitrary. What the author deemed to be a looseness reminiscent of line-projected-from-point (perhaps invoking Matisse) struck me as sloppiness.
The discussion of design principles reminds me of the work of Christopher Alexander on the different types of “strong-centres” that bound living space.
Image from Pinterest.