A good design matches the information. So even if a design is visually unappealing, it might not be a bad design if it is for something bad, evil, or scary. It would be a bad design for something like a wedding invitation, though (Well, many might disagree, but everyone has different opinions of everything).
Let's say in that wedding invitation, the bride and groom's names have the smallest font. It would be saying that they're not very significant. Or even worse: if the groom's name is smaller than the bride's name. Another way to change the message is if the bride's name is in italic and the groom's name is... scribbled like a child learning to write. A lot of people would find that funny. But if it was the bride's name that was smaller or scribbled... then it'd be sexist and a display of male supremacy. Funny how that works out.
I personally like a simple design with solid colors and a Sans-Serif/Helvetica font. I like lower case titles, too. There should also be large bold fonts for headings, a smaller and still bold font for categories, a bit smaller for subcategories, ~size 12 font for the body of the text, etc. to keep things organized.
I like Macs because the design is very simple, clean, boxy, and everything is aligned. I think a simple design tells us that Macs are easy to use and are well organized. Simple designs are also easier to look at, and keeps my attention. Vector graphics are usually simpler and cleaner, too, which are great for Mac icons since you can enlarge them and have them enlarge in the Dock. For example, this is my desktop:
Ice cream pops from Indeepop (oh look, it's tiny font! way to apply concepts, huh)
If the icons were words, I wouldn't place them in each corner like that because a viewer wouldn't be able to know what to start looking at. However, since the subject of the wallpaper is in the center of the screen, having icons in each corner helps to keep the screen visually balanced. I think the icons in the Dock are too random, though :( It's a bit visually confusing because some are 2D and some are 3D.
I think that no matter how elegant a design is, if too much is going on -- such as different colors, different shades, and different fonts -- it would distract the viewer from the message or the text. And usually elegant designs are curvy like on Corinthian columns. I think as long as the elegant designs are in their own section, it won't interfere with the text. The text should be a bit italic as well, so it will go along with the elegance.
Robinson-
ReplyDeleteThis is a good post, although not exactly what the assignment was. You were supposed to pick one piece of design, and ad or a movie poster, for example and dissect it. You did this a little when you talk about the design of the mac, however all in all this post is a little too general. But it is well written so, good job!
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