Contrast Memo

Throughout the semester we learned seven or eight main concepts. I caught myself using these concepts in other projects for other classes. The one that stuck with me the most is contrast. Contrast is a valuable tool for emphasizing important design objects. Contrast can come in the form of shape, size, color, value, or position. If you look through all of my redesigns, I talk about contrast the most in each explanation. Contrast is important to me, because it is used to highlight important terms on a page. This will be useful in my future career, because I want to be a technical writer.

I think contrast is the most important concept I learned in the class, because it can be used in every document I will use in the future. Contrast is used in textbooks, and I did not even realize it. I remember in grade school having to write definitions out of the textbook and that is done by skimming the pages of the textbook for bolded terms. It is also used for headers in chapters by bolding and making the size bigger. If we made the headers of chapters the same size and value as the body text, it would make the book harder to read since people like to skim books. This helps the reader get a sense of what the chapter is about without reading every word for word. I taught this to a friend when I was helping her with her resume. I told her she should bold certain words to show importance and italicize others to show their relevance. I think it helps organize the resume and makes it easier to skim since that’s what most human resources people do to resumes. The artifact I used contrast the most in was my menu redesign for Potato Shack. I used size, color, and value to emphasize important items on the menu and make things relevant. I made all of the names of the items, ingredients, and titles different sizes, colors, and values to show importance and keep the menu consistent.

Out of all the concepts learned in class this semester, I think contrast is the most important concept. It can be used by changing the shape, size, color, value, or position of text in a document. This is relevant to me, because I will use this when I become a technical writer to help users find important terms or steps in a set of instructions.

Redesign #5- Lacrosse Flyer

For this project, I decided to make a flyer to advertise the Texas Tech Women’s Lacrosse team’s last home game. It was this past weekend and we played TCU. We won 16-9 by the way. Here is the flyer:

I was going for simple in this flyer. These would be handed out on campus somewhere and students have the attention span of about .40692 seconds when looking at flyers handed out. I went straight to the point giving a date, place, and time. I kept the whole flyer black, white, red, and grey accents in the logo.
Alignment- I centered the logo in the middle of the flyer and put text on both sides. I off-set the text on the left and put it closer to the bottom because the S in “Women’s” was too close to the logo and I wanted to keep the text that size so it would fill the space better. Then on the right side, I put spaces between the text at the top and between “When” and “Where” sections to help distinguish between the different content. I turned the logo slightly clock-wise to make the flyer look more interesting instead of just a straight double T and text.
Proximity- I divided the content with the text on the right kind of my title, and the text on the right is explaining more about what the flyer is about with details. I put the spaces between the text on the right to help make things easy to read, and show where a new though ends and begins. Since the text on the left is towards the bottom of the flyer and the text on the right is towards the top, I created some white space in the corners so the flyer is a little less cluttered. I also put a space after every word on the left so that it is less cluttered and didn’t put too much white space on the bottom.
Repetition- I mainly used repetition in the colors. I kept with the school spirit and used black, red, white, and grey accents in the logo. I also used the same font on the content on the sides (Berlin Sans).
Contrast- I made the background black and used white text for the not-so-important content. On the left side I made the white words a 36 size, and the “Texas Tech Women’s Lacrosse” size 48 and red. I did this to make the important information stand out more to the readers. Then on the right side, I made the details and the name of the club red to make the information stand out more, while making the “Where” and “When” in white.

Redesign #4- Potato Shack Menu

For my 4th redesign, I decided to make a menu for the company Potato Shack. On their website, they have a link for a menu but nothing comes up. Here is a snap shot of what the menu now looks like:

It is very important for this company to have a menu up and running because they do deliver to people’s houses. This company started out in Huntsville and has expanded to College Station and Bryan, TX. It is mainly college students that go here, so the atmosphere is pretty laid-back. I had originally made a pretty basic menu because I just couldn’t come up with anything clever, but today in class, Felipe (thanks Felipe) gave me the idea to make the menu have the color scheme of a baked potato. So, in my redesign, I got an image of a potato skin and made that the border. Then, I used orange, red-brown, and green text to imitate cheese, bacon bits, and chives.

Perception- This color scheme gives the perception of a baked potato in a clever way. It is iconic for a baked potato to have cheese, bacon bits, and chives on them. This abstract way of displaying a baked potato makes the menu more interesting to look at and gives it a creative twist.

Contrast- I used a lot of different ways to contrast the menu.
To begin with, I made the “cheese” text for the description of each potato. This is the majority of the text because who doesn’t like a lot of cheese on their potato? Just kidding. I made this part the lighter color because it is not as important as the actual names of the potatoes. I also made the font 11pt to save some space and make the names stand out more.
The names of the potatoes are a red-brown color making them stand out more against the off-white background to signify their importance. I also bolded the names and kept them at a 12pt font to make them stand out more from the description.
I made the headers 30 pt and green to display the “chives” part. I think the bright green really pops out on the page and draws the eyes of the reader to them.

Repetition- Throughout the menu I used 2 fonts: Myriad Pro and Hobo. For the text, I used Myriad Pro because it is easy to read since it is a sans serif. For the headers, I used Hobo because I think it is kind of fun for the laid-back atmosphere.

Proximity- I separated the items into the groups: Potatoes, salads, sides, and drinks. I put space between each group to show that they are not related to each other. It was really hard keeping all of the potatoes on one page since they had so many. I decided to make them into columns and divide them with a line so that the descriptions wouldn’t run into each other. I made sure that the line was exactly in the middle of the document so that each side is equal.

Alignment- On the “Potatoes” page, I center aligned the header and left-aligned the body text. I made 2 columns because there wasn’t a lot of description and made the page have a lot of unnecessary white space. On the second page, I allowed the “Salads” section to have a bit more space because there was more to be described than the “Sides” section, and I didn’t want to put them on top of each other because there would be awkward white space on the right side. Under the “Drinks” section, I aligned the names of drinks with the beginning and end of the header.

Culture 3/27

For my 4th project, I am redesigning the menu for the company Potato Shack. Here is what it looks like now:
http://www.potatoshack.biz/menu.php?store=NorthGate

I'm not quite sure how I can talk about perception, culture, or rhetoric in my redesign. The only thing I can think about doing is adding some decorative pictures of a few of the potatoes they have to offer. I'm not redesigning their logo or anything along those sort. I'm mainly going to be adding some contrast and different colors to help identify between the description and the name of the potatoes. Any ideas?

TTU Typography

Using different kinds of typography is a good way to differentiate between different information. TTU has a strict set of typography found at this website: http://www.depts.ttu.edu/communications/identityguidelines/idguidelines/ttu/elements/type.php. The body text is Roman Charter and Helvetica Neue for important information like class schedules and catalogs. Helvetica is one of the most generic fonts to choose, but I don't really expect anything less from Tech. I feel the colors are kind of dull looking. The darker red background makes the page look boring. I do like that they make some statements a softer gray to make it more friendly. Tech also makes some of the important headers like course schedules a larger font and in a bright red. This shows importance in the text and makes that paragraph recognizable. Tech also uses Edwardian Script for important announcements like graduations. I like this script because it is elegant looking and it does look like it is talking about something important.

Redesign # 3- Resume

Proximity- The proximity that I did in my design was grouping related content together. For example, in my "Education" and "Employment" section I put spaces in between each job and school I went to to show the information underneath the title related. I also drew a line between each section to help divide them and make the resume easier to read.

Repetition- Keeping everything consistent in a resume is very important. For my resume, I kept the same font, Century Gothic, throughout the whole document. I felt this font was easy to read. Looking at this font, I would say it is in the san serif family since it has the same thickness all the way through and there are no serifs on the ends of the letters. I strayed away from the regular helvetica and arial since those are so common and boring. I also used the same line to divide the sections. It is just a one point solid thickness. I did not want to get too crazy with a distracting dotted line or something of that matter. I like boring sometimes.

Contrast- This was a major part for my resume. I used a combination of bold, italics, and caps to highlight different parts of my resume. For my headers, I bolded and used all caps to show their importance. Looking at my document, you can easily see what each section is about because of the boldness. I also left aligned them all the way to the left so they would not get jumbled with the rest of my content. On the right side where all of my content is, I used a combination of bold and italics to emphasize the different content. All of the bold parts are the name of the job, school, or activity I was involved in. Making them bold shows their importance, but not more than the headers where were in upper caps. Second, the italicized parts are my title or degree that I got from those schools. These are important parts too, but they don’t out-shine the actual place or activity that I was a member of. Last, the regular text is explaining what I did at my job, skills, or relevant courses. Explaining myself is an important part of my resume, but these parts need to be easy to read and I would like for them to read the other parts first so they can see the relevance.
Alignment- This is something I find the most problems with in people’s resumes. I think this is very important because at first glance this is the first thing that employers will notice. Alignment issues will definitely show up on paper, which is usually what you turn in to an employer at an interview. For my resume, I kept all of my content lined up at 2 1/3”. I played around with that size to see what would be a good distance from my longer headings, but still give me enough room to talk about my accomplishments. I also made sure that my lines were flush against the outside border. This makes the document seem full and well put together.

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