Principle One –Legibility

When people design something such as a magazine, a business card or a billboard it is important to make it legible. There are a lot of simple things which can be involved in the legibility of an image. If you have a piece of text the simple thing is can you read it? There can be several things which can improve how legible something is and whether it will be understood or not. One of these things would be the type that is used what font is it? And can you read the font or is it too big or small or an awkward font to read?

Depending on the size of the media will affect how big or small your type needs to be, if it was for a billboard it will have to be a lot larger than the type on a business card. Alignment is also something which you need to consider if it is all aligned left, right or in the centre then that is normally very legible however if some of it was aligned right and some aligned left then it would be confusing of where you are supposed to look and what you actually need to read.

Colour is another thing in which you need to consider because yellow and white is a really low contrast and the most difficult colour combination to read whereas black and yellow is a very high contrast and easy to read. You also need to make sure you break things down in to paragraphs and there aren’t loads of words going across as you could get lost and not be able to read it well. The other thing to consider is if you include an image you need to put the text around it because sometimes if the text is over an image you can’t read it that well.

http://rankin.co.uk/advertising/#/pic128

This is an example of an advert, I think this is a good example of legibility because the white type is very clear and an easy font to read, it is a good colour contrast and it is clearly communicating the message that music gets your talking. I think it is a good use of photography and that the graphics is very good as well it is easily legible and understandable. This visually communicates to everyone the point in which they are trying to get across so I think it is a very successful advert.

This is an example of a magazine cover, The title is very bold and easy to see and read and then there are several different fonts on the front cover of this magazine which could make it a bit awkward to read and the left half of the magazine is quite bright and as it’s a bit over exposed and white font that makes it a bit awkward to read. I think this is still good and quite easy to understand however I don’t think it is as legible as the first example.

http://rankin.co.uk/covers/#/pic55

As you can see making something easily legible and understanding is very important because it someone can’t clearly understand what you have designed they are not going to be likely to pick it up and read it so it is a very important part of the design process.