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Exercise 5—Styling, Structuring, and Systems

Systems are ways of organizing components so that they function together to produce an outcome. Designing with a system requires that you think about the whole view as well as the detailed view—how the whole is working and what components are doing. Often systems rely on the use of modular components that have similar functions—in typography this can be grids or styles for instance. Grids can guide the placement of elements on a screen or page so that consistency across various sections is created. Styles can help us efficiently control how similar kinds of text can look. This exercise will help you employ styles as a way of creating a system that controls a complex and large amount of text.

Learning Objectives

  • Manipulate basic typographic/spatial structures at the level of word and sentence.
  • Analyze and explain the contributing factors of readability, legibility and hierarchy as the fundamentals of effective typographic communication.

Materials/Tools Required

  • Laptop
  • Adobe InDesign CC
  • Adobe Font Folio
  • BW Laser printing credits (optional)
  • Red marker pen (optional)

Content Required

  • Bring-your-own-content, as per Project 2
  • If you don't have content; think about the examples in the Project 2's brief and bring in content to start with

Steps

  1. Make a copy of your latest work in InDesign for Project 2. Name this file “YourName_Exercise5_v1.indd”.
  2. Make sure your document is 24” x 36” (the required size of your Project 2 document).
  3. Focus on creating a vertical and horizontal grid:
    • Determine and set the margin of your document (i.e. the invisible border around your document within which all components should be contained).
    • Experiment with the creation of a grid to help you place and align elements of your layout; select menu item Layout > Create Guides.
    • You can also experiment with using the Baseline grid option.
    • After each experiment save a version by selecting menu item “File > Save As” to make a new file and change the filename by incrementing the filename number by 1 (e.g. _v1 becomes _v2).
    • Make at least 5 versions. At the end you should have 5 files each ending in a number from 1 to 5 (e.g. _v1…._v5).
  4. Focus on creating text styles:
    • Determine how many kinds of information your project has. For example: title, subtitle, name, date, size, year, description, height, weight, origin, etc.
    • Create a paragraph style for each kind of information.
    • Save as a new file and change the filename by incrementing the filename number by 1 (e.g. _v5 becomes _v6).
    • Begin changing the style definitions and note their difference in your layout.
    • Once you’ve reached a version that you like save this version and save as new file change filename (as described above).
    • Make at least 5 versions. At the end you should have 5 files each ending in a number from 1 to 5 (e.g. _v6…._v10).
  5. Submit all your files to Canvas by end of class (can be a single PDF containing all versions, or a ZIP package of PDFs)
  6. Can be included in your zine, but definitely consider creating more variations outside of class time.

Evaluation

  • Process
  • Iteration
  • Extent of exploration