Contrast and Scale - Graphic Design Foundations: Typography

Key Concepts

• Importance of Contrast and Scale: Crucial for directing viewer attention and making typography stand out.
• Techniques: Utilize contrast, scale, style, weight, width, color, and position to enhance visual dynamics and information separation.

Main Ideas

• Grabbing Attention: Contrast and scale can powerfully engage viewers, guiding them to key content.
• Design Decisions: Always begin with content. Prioritize what needs to stand out the most, then proceed to the next important elements.
• Visual Dynamics: Strong contrast in style, weight, width, color, and position creates visual interest and separates information effectively.

Practical Application

• Use in Projects: Ensure important elements like the logo, headline, and navigation stand out.
• Exercises: Downloadable exercise files available for hands-on practice.

Access and Viewing

• Course Access: Available through LinkedIn Learning, with potential access via organization.
• Offline Learning: Courses can be downloaded for offline viewing on mobile devices using the LinkedIn Learning app.

Course Structure

• Introduction: Overview of typography and its importance.
• Typographic Differentiation: Differences between serif vs. sans serif, display type vs. text type, etc.
• The Language of Type: Anatomy, sizes, and type families.
• Spacing and Alignment: Kerning, tracking, leading, and alignment.
• Touching on Type Design: Basics of type design and its starting points.
• Legibility and Readability: Understanding the difference and enhancing both.
• Typographic Composition: Using grids, contrast, and scale effectively.
• Thinking with Type: Expressive typography and emotional impacts.
• Specialized Uses: Environmental typography, branding, motion typography, etc.
• Final Thoughts: Managing fonts, building a type library, and developing a typographic eye.