Having read the second chapter of Lupton's book, 'Thinking of Type', I find myself learning so much more about text than I ever have although I've been writing/typing practically my whole life! Like typography, I took text for granted and never once gave thought about spacing, letter kerning and punctuation. While I have always thought that that was how text worked, Lupton states in her book that, 'Typography made text into a thing, a material object with known dimensions and fixed locations.'
Throughout the chapter, there were two particular things that I paid more attention to. Firstly, I found myself agreeing to Lupton when she wrote that one of design's most humane function is to help readers avoid reading. Most of us are accustomed to organizing our written/typed work like putting an indent to create a new paragraph or capitalizing and bolding the section headers. Like many books, I used to think that the purpose of doing so was to enhance the readability of the written word but now I agree completely with Lupton - these text functions actually help us navigate our way around the body of the text to pick up the content we want to read.
The next thing that greatly interested me was when Lupton proposed the question, 'Why, for example, are readers on the Web less patient than readers of the print?' This question leads me to the idea that people read more printed material than they do on the Web. If this is the case, then I have to disagree with Lupton. I find myself reading more on the Web than reading printed material. I feel that while it is more convenient to have printed materials in my hands, reading online material keeps me focused. I find that online materials are more interesting because online sites usually have more pictures or hyperlinks that will direct me to other interesting sites. Although going online puts people in a 'search mode', I feel that people do not necessarily disregard their 'processing mode'. After all, what is the point of finding something if one does not process the meaning of it?
Overall, not only did I enjoy reading the chapter and the thoughts that arose from reading it, but I loved the examples she gave particularly about the alignment of text because that gives me more ideas about how to align my text according to the purpose I am trying to achieve. This time, my text will be aligned as justified to give my blog post a clean structured look, and you can tell me if it works or not!
Throughout the chapter, there were two particular things that I paid more attention to. Firstly, I found myself agreeing to Lupton when she wrote that one of design's most humane function is to help readers avoid reading. Most of us are accustomed to organizing our written/typed work like putting an indent to create a new paragraph or capitalizing and bolding the section headers. Like many books, I used to think that the purpose of doing so was to enhance the readability of the written word but now I agree completely with Lupton - these text functions actually help us navigate our way around the body of the text to pick up the content we want to read.
The next thing that greatly interested me was when Lupton proposed the question, 'Why, for example, are readers on the Web less patient than readers of the print?' This question leads me to the idea that people read more printed material than they do on the Web. If this is the case, then I have to disagree with Lupton. I find myself reading more on the Web than reading printed material. I feel that while it is more convenient to have printed materials in my hands, reading online material keeps me focused. I find that online materials are more interesting because online sites usually have more pictures or hyperlinks that will direct me to other interesting sites. Although going online puts people in a 'search mode', I feel that people do not necessarily disregard their 'processing mode'. After all, what is the point of finding something if one does not process the meaning of it?
Overall, not only did I enjoy reading the chapter and the thoughts that arose from reading it, but I loved the examples she gave particularly about the alignment of text because that gives me more ideas about how to align my text according to the purpose I am trying to achieve. This time, my text will be aligned as justified to give my blog post a clean structured look, and you can tell me if it works or not!
No comments:
Post a Comment