Legibility (a word which you will become sick of after this blog) is an integral aspect to any design, either creating your work perfectly legible for the audience to immediately recognise and receive your concept/message, or purposefully create a seemingly illegible design in order to intrigue your audience to looking closer. One of the main elements to legibility is a coherent visual hierarchy around each part of your design; if this hierarchy is not coherent then it is likely you will end up with a confusing thus likely illegible design. An example of legibility concerning visual hierarchy is when text is placed directly over an image. Sometimes this can work, assuming the text is of a contrasting colour, and image itself is of a relatively plain contrast with little detail, such as a sky or a simple wallpaper. When it is placed over a more intricate image, or the type colour is similar then the text gets lost and the visual hierarchy is blurred.
As can be seen here, the text becomes lost over the darker elements of the image and becomes significantly less legible to the audience. This links heavily with another aspect of legibility: colour. Like with text over an image requiring a high contrast, colours used in designs need to be coherent and suitable too. For example, yellow is a poor choice when placed over white, like this.Whereas even if I were to use light grey over white like this, then your eye will be able to note a difference and read the subtle text. Due to research though, white is apparently not the most easily visible over black; according to their results, yellow is in fact easier to read, as shown here.
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| shirt ironically saying 'illegible' |
While colour is important, so is the choice of font. If I were using a celtic/gothic script font to advertise a foreign student English course, then although native English people could easily read it, the style of font may pose a problem for foreign people, whereas a clear sans serif would convey the message easily. Font size and layout styles pose similar conundrums, because although a small font size to a staggered baseline and offset paragraphing may be legible under examination, it is not initially legible, and probably of little use. Legibility can also vary when alternated between print and screen viewing, and further vary in those contexts of; screen: tv, phone, computer and print: paper, billboard, and mediums such as clothing material. When designing for a brief, you must consider the optimums and negatives of each required medium and tailor your design to maximise legibility across each viewing. Will there be too much text to fit on a phone screen? Will the cultural context of the layout be transferrable and legible when applied to a foreign design (in the case of internationally available websites or tv shows) A common mistake made in design is also the transfer of a design from full colour, to greyscale for a letterhead. Most people will often use the colour design but print in mono, what they do not understand is this may make the design illegible, as although colours appear different, they have similar intensities and thus will result from a mono print, into very similar shades of grey, removing contrast and clarity.
In this poster here, designed by myself for the WWF, I chose; the colours, word count and layout very carefully, maximising legibility. The three tone palette makes the design bold, while the word placing allows the eye to read it in multiple ways, while maintaining a consistently strong message. Help stop poaching. help poaching stop. It is possible to read it in other ways too, although the white 'Help' placed in the top corner immediately sets a visual hierarchy of being the initial word, and making the exclamation mark the final. The font is a clear sans serif and at a high point size, and while the layout is unorthodox for reading, it is specifically like that in order to appear aesthetically pleasing but more importantly to draw the interest of the audience member to the design.
This links to my second key point, tone of voice. As odd as you may think it at first, fonts, images and colours each have a 'tone of voice'. The tone of voice in this design is bold and forceful due to the bold, high point sized text in correlation with the bold colour scheme. Since this is a charity poster, it may be thought that a 'shouting' tone of voice would be largely unacceptable and would drive the audience away, although the tone of voice here is reflective upon the context and content concerning severity of the cause; poaching (as reinforced by the satirical image I produced beside)
Now look at the following examples. The first two words do not seem right, as the don't have the assumed tone of voice. The fluid script text is commonly associated with a delicate subject, while the heavier bold sans serif has far more presence, demanding attention. When these are reversed as shown in the following two words, they make much more sense. This is also where tone of voice, in application to fonts make sense too. The crucial principal to it, is that each and every subject carries a preset connotation formed by general consensus. For example, if 1990 romance films had chosen not to use use script fonts such as this, then the cultural connotation may be different. If over time the use of bold sans serif fonts was widely used in progression towards the representation of delicate subjects (as unlikely as it is) then the associations and thus tones of voice attached to those fonts would change too.
So, does the tone of voice connected with a particular typography, image or colour affect the way I react? Very likely so, yes. To begin with, reading 'whisper' in the scripted font probably felt much more natural than that of the sans serif. But it goes deeper than that. Colours contain a tone of voice too, the colour red will often either brood an inherit emotion of anger OR passion depending on the context it is used in. In advertising campaigns tone of voice is carefully chosen as to attract the desired demographic, and may even be used in juxtaposition with the project to cause a controversial interest.
The image set here for the Volvo XC90 is an interesting advertising campaign, using the tone of voice connoted by these images to bring a feeling of serenity to the viewer. By using this tone of voice, the audience is likely to be housewives looking for relaxation rather than a more masculine loud car. The tone of voice also implies that these scenes are achievable through this product. Cleverly, the designers have omitted a photo of the actual car, as visually (its personal tone of voice) is quite bold and contradictory to the desired message. 
When comparing this campaign to another car, such as the Mazda 2 changes are immediately seen in the tones of voice, through: the chosen imagery, typographics and colour schemes. The overall tone of voice for this design is now very action based and modernly stylish, likely aimed at a mid 20 to mid 30's male target audience. This tone of voice is created through the predominate black, in contrast with the neon greens and turquoises closely resembling clubs and nightlife. The dynamic angle to the car in relation to text baselines (which hold an italic text this making the strokes vertical again) and blocks also connotes a progressive action theme along with the movement captures in the slow shutter speed stylised elements to the photo as well as the flying taper banners.
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