Typography and Structure

During this session, we were taught about typography. It was important for us to know about how to format and change the text in order to communicate effectively. Correct font usage would also help clarity and context as long as an appropriate font was used. For example, a font that was somewhat grunge would not work with text talking about a Victorian exhibition.

As well as this, we also talked about font families. This means one particular font has some variations that can be applied to one document. The title, subheading and main body of text can have font from the same family and whilst looking different, it will still be cohesive.

In InDesign, Alan explained a bit more about formatting within the program. As well as explaining the origin of the term “leading”, he told us about its use and how it mean the space between lines. It was also important for us to remember that the leading should be 120% of the font size. Meaning that if the font was 10px, the leading would be 12px in order to keep it clear and legible. InDesign would apply this automatically, but we could alter it for whatever purpose.

Then we went through an exercise to get us used to breaking down a text to figure out its structure so it can be formatted appropriately. This included titles, subheadings, notes, and main paragraphs. This would be followed by using a tool in InDesign to auto format a part of the text and should it need to be changed later on, it could be done as a group. 

This was the first two page of the information sheet. I went through and annotated it so i knew how i would be structuring it. The change in colour represented the change in pages. I did this with the whole information sheet to be used later. 

This was after i applied paragraphing to the document in word. This will be useful when it comes to laying it out in InDesign.