Chapter 2: Text Yaqoob Al-Slaise ITBIS351

Outline Word Choice Fonts and Faces Text’s role in multimedia projects Text on PC and Mac Defining Hypermedia

Introduction

The Power of Meaning 0 Give the meaning of the following words:

The Power of Meaning Barbie

The Power of Meaning Green

The Power of Meaning Lite

The Power of Meaning 0 Words can carry more than one meaning that can trigger different emotions. 0 Good word choice is essential when designing multimedia. Navigation and menus depend heavily on text. 0 Word choice depends on a number of factors: Demographic – Culture (Norms) – Language

Fonts and Faces 0 Typeface: a family of graphic characters that usually includes many type sizes and styles. 0 Font: is a collection of characters of a single size and style belonging to a particular typeface family. 0 Styles: Bold or Italic 0 Attributes: Underlining, strokes, font size, color etc..

Dissecting Text

Kerning 0 the process of adjusting the spacing between characters in a proportional font, usually to achieve a visually pleasing result.

Tracking 0 The consistent degree of increase (or sometimes decrease) of space between letters to affect density in a line or block of text.

Serif +Sans Serif 0 Serif: 0 Used in printed media for large blocks of text (newspapers, magazines, novels etc..) 0 Sans serif: 0 Large Advertisements 0 Newspaper Headlines 0 Web content

Task: 0 Working in pairs or threes, think about what kind of messages these typefaces can convey. 0 Time? 0 Theme? 0 Where?

Designing with Text 0 Presentations: 0 Font size 18 or larger 0 Bullet Points 0 Short sentences 0 Websites: 0 Crammed text on the screen is common 0 Clear design and columns 0 Font size can be points and be acceptable.

Choosing Fonts 0 For small type, use the most legible font available. Decorative fonts that cannot be read are useless, as shown at right.

Choosing Fonts 0 Use as few different faces as possible in the same work. 0 Vary the weight and size of your typeface using italic and bold styles where they look good. 0 Using too many fonts on the same page is called ransom-note typography.

Choosing Fonts 0 Pick the fonts that seem right to you for getting your message across, then double-check your choice against other opinions. 0 Learn to accept criticism. 0 (Never use Comic Sans)

Text tips 0 Use meaningful words or phrases for links and menu items. 0 Text links on web pages can accent your message: they normally stand out by color and underlining. 0 Bold or emphasize text to highlight ideas or concepts, but do not make text look like a link or a button when it is not.

Reading Text 0 Printed media is easier to read than on a monitor.

Fonts Wars

Adobe PostScript 0 PostScript is a method of describing an image in terms of mathematical constructs (Bézier curves), so it is used not only to describe the individual characters of a font but also to describe entire illustrations and whole pages of text. 0 It can be easily scaled bigger or smaller so it looks right.

TrueType 0 A joint effort between Apple and Microsoft to create a faster font methodology.

OpenType 0 Developed in 2007, OpenType is a free publicly available international standard of fonts which can be installed on any system.

Hypertext 0 Indexed hypertext makes web search possible. 0 Software robots visit millions of web pages and index entire web sites.

Searching for Words 0 Categories Selecting or limiting the documents, pages, or fields of text within which to search for a word or words. 0 Word relationships Searching for words according to their general proximity and order. For example, you might search for “birthday” and “cake” only when they occur on the same page or in the same paragraph.

Searching for Words 0 Adjacency Searching for words occurring next to one another, usually in phrases and proper names. For instance, find “widow” only when “black” is the preceding adjacent word. 0 Alternates Applying an OR criterion to search for two or more words, such as “bacon” or “eggs.” 0 Association Applying an AND criterion to search for two or more words, such as “skiff,” “tender,” “dinghy,” and “rowboat.”

Searching for Words 0 Negation Applying a NOT criterion to search exclusively for references to a word that are not associated with the word. For example, find all occurrences of “paste” when “library” is not present in the same sentence. 0 Truncation Searching for a word with any of its possible suffixes. For example, to find all occurrences of “girl” and “girls,” you may need to specify something like girl#. Multiple character suffixes can be managed with another specifier, so geo* might yield “geo,” “geology,” and “geometry,” as well as “George.”

Searching for Words 0 Intermediate words Searching for words that occur between what might normally be adjacent words, such as a middle name or initial in a proper name. 0 Frequency Searching for words based on how often they appear: the more times a term is mentioned in a document, the more relevant the document is to this term.

Hypermedia Structures 0 Hypertext systems consist of: 0 Links: connections between the conceptual elements of the system. 0 Nodes: consist of text, graphics, sounds, or related information in the knowledge base.

Links 0 Link anchor: Where you come from when clicking a link to another page or document. 0 Link end: is the destination node linked to the anchor.

Homework 0 Take 75 minutes to do the following: 0 Visit at least 5 different websites (News, Educational, Social Media, Entertainment, Commercial) 0 Analyze the text (size, font, colors, amount of text on screen) 0 Write a brief report describing which of the websites was best designed from your point of view.