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.