- Experiment with page / column width.
Using a few more of the documents you created in previous lessons, alter the page or column width in each layout using the font sizes you originally chose. Find the widest and narrowest columns that you can use and still look good and have the text readable. Don’t use the line length formulas. Just eyeball it, do what looks right.
- Experiment with font size.
Using some of the documents you created in previous lessons alter the font sizes in each layout. Go bigger and smaller until you find what you feel is the largest and smallest font size you can use for those page/column widths. Don’t use the line length formulas. Just eyeball it, do what looks good.
- Calculate ideal line lengths.
Using the line length calculations on page 1 of this lesson determine the range of the ideal line length for each of the documents you just worked with in steps 1 and 2. Do your lines fall within that range? If not, are they way too short or too long or just a little outside the range?
In our next lesson of this series we’re SHOUTING about type. Are you misusing capital letters?
Found this page by accident? This is one of 12 lessons delivered as part of the Rules of Desktop Publishing free email class.
Quotable Design
| “Right and wrong do not exist in graphic design. There is only effective and non-effective communication.” — Peter Bilak - Illegibility |
| Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. |
| “Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right, or doing it better.” — John Updike |
