Choosing two or more fonts to use together can be tricky. You want the fonts to complement each other, but not be too similar — different, but so wildly different that they clash. Avoiding these extremes of too little or too much contrast often ends up being a process of experimentation and trial-and-error — like Goldilocks testing out the three bears’ porridge and finding one too cold, one too hot, but one “just right.”

Most design programs will allow you to adjust letter-spacing/tracking (spacing between whole groups of letters in lines or passages of text), kerning (spacing between pairs of letters), and leading (vertical space between lines).

Every designer needs a few neutral fonts that adapt to their surroundings and can be a go-to choice when time is tight or nothing else seems to be working.

Your first concern in choosing a font for a project should be that it matches the message or purpose of your design.

You wouldn’t wear a bathing suit to a job interview; then again, you wouldn’t want to wear a suit and tie during your vacation on the beach either. There’s an element of appropriateness to consider.Now, what your clothes do for you, font choices serve the same purpose in a design.

The typeface is the design; the font is how that design is delivered. typeface + style + size = font A font is what you use; a typeface is what you see.

Though this point is often debated, it’s commonly said that serifs make long passages (in print) easier to navigate visually, helping move your eyes along the lines of text. However, because serifs are usually small and thin, they often don’t display as well on pixel-based screens (looking distorted and “noisy” rather than clear and crisp), so many designers favor sans-serif fonts for web use, especially at small sizes.

four basic font categories

So if you’ve ever felt a little lost when it comes to fonts, then you’re in the right place.

Where to Find Free Fonts

But how many fonts are too many? There are those in the design community who would say that one font will do for most projects, and that three is the maximum number you should include in one design to avoid an overly busy or confusing layout. While that’s a good starting point if you’re new to design, there really are no rules — at least, no rules that can’t be broken in the right situation. Some designs will call for a certain aesthetic or an extra-decorative look that would benefit from a wider range of fonts.

Choosing two or more fonts to use together can be tricky. You want the fonts to complement each other, but not be too similar — different, but so wildly different that they clash. Avoiding these extremes of too little or too much contrast often ends up being a process of experimentation and trial-and-error — like Goldilocks testing out the three bears’ porridge and finding one too cold, one too hot, but one “just right.”

Spacing: Adjusting the spacing of your text so that it’s appropriate for your design is a big contributor to enhanced readability. In most cases, generous spacing improves readability. But if you’re tight on space, you’ll need to experiment with different combinations of font size and spacing to optimize readability. Most design programs will allow you to adjust letter-spacing/tracking (spacing between whole groups of letters in lines or passages of text), kerning (spacing between pairs of letters), and leading (vertical space between lines).

If you’re including text in your design, it’s likely that you have something important to communicate. Readability becomes an important quality to look for in a font to make sure your message comes across. How can you tell whether a typeface is readable, other than your own visual assessment?

Every designer needs a few neutral fonts that adapt to their surroundings and can be a go-to choice when time is tight or nothing else seems to be working. These types of fonts, sometimes referred to as “workhorse” typefaces, are usually basic serif or sans-serif fonts that can be used pretty anywhere because they don’t draw a lot of attention to themselves.

Display or decorative typefaces (briefly mentioned at the beginning of the article), on the other hand, are never suitable for reading at length. These are the type of fonts that scream, “Look at me!” They come in various degrees of usefulness, from the bold, all-caps fonts that might be used for headlines, to the fonts that are very literal or obvious — such as snow-capped letters that seem to say “I’m supposed to be used at Christmas!” or letters that look like they’re made of made of logs or twigs that supposedly give your design an instantly outdoorsy look.

The Basics

Consider context and audience.

Do the elements of your font “outfit” clash, or do they complement each other? Are they effectively communicating the qualities you want to project? These considerations are part of what makes choosing fonts such an important part of the design process, one that should be approached thoughtfully.

All that to say, that for most graphic design purposes today, the terms are more or less interchangeable; fonts are the digital representations of typefaces, and we can change either with a simple click on our computer screens… So unless you’re talking to a typography expert who you want to impress with your superior knowledge, no need to worry about the differences.

You may have heard the text you use in design projects referred to as both fonts and typefaces and wondered if the two terms mean the same thing. Technically and historically (in terms of typesetting) they’re different, but today, they’re often used interchangeably. If you’re interested in understanding the difference, a few snappy definitions might help:

rpose.

3) Script: Scripts are what we might think of as cursive- or handwriting-style fonts. They generally have connecting letters. You’ll find that script fonts come in many different styles, from elegant, to fun and casual, to hand-drawn.

classifications, each with their own historical and technical definitions

1) Serif: Serif fonts have little “feet” or lines attached the ends of their letters. They’re generally thought to look more serious or traditional.

Short answer: there are many, including some crazy ones that defy categorization.

This guide is designed to offer a comprehensive overview of fonts: their different categories, how to choose them, how to use them, and even where to find free font downloads.

there are plenty of fonts available that are free to download or commonly available on many operating systems that will do very nicely for everyday design projects. In the serif category, try Georgia,

Display or decorative typefaces (briefly mentioned at the beginning of the article), on the other hand, are never suitable for reading at length.

One of the most common mistakes that beginners make is not realizing what various font categories are most suitable for — for instance, body typefaces versus display typefaces.

Consider context and audience.Where and how your design will be viewed should also figure into your font choices.

every typeface has its own mood or personality.

bad typographic choices always distract from your design’s message and intentions.

Is your font saying “beach vacation” when it should be saying “job interview”?

Think about what your clothes might say about you: based on what you wear, people might rightly or wrongly make assumptions about your style, your personality, your socio-economic background, your age (or the age you wish you were), or the kind of impression you want to make.

Jessica Hische

Dan Mayer

Erik Spiekermann

Put simply, the rule of thirds says that if you divide your page into thirds both vertically and horizontally, the points at which the grid lines intersect provide the natural focal points of a composition.

The idea is that by identifying and re-using a motif or design treatment throughout your layout, you can provide a reference for the reader so that disparate areas feel connected and part of the same overall composition.

It's common for novice designers to make use of every single bit of space on a page, stuffing in content until every gap has been filled. The more experienced know that sometimes the best bit of design involves leaving elements out, rather than shoehorning them in.

Put simply, the rule of thirds says that if you divide your page into thirds both vertically and horizontally, the points at which the grid lines intersect provide the natural focal points of a composition. By aligning your key elements to these four points, you'll achieve a more pleasing composition than if you, for example, perfectly centre elements on your page.

One of the most effective ways to provide a sense of balance is to choose a single focal point for your layout. A good example of this in practice is the use of a large image as the biggest single element on a page.

This can help provide a sense of order to your layout, providing the reader with a clear structural reference to fall back on. This is important because when all your page elements have a feeling of connectivity with each other, the overall effect feels more comfortable to the reader, helping to put them at ease, and facilitating their access to the important stuff: the content!

A good page composition should be both pleasing to the eye, but also communicate those key messages clearly to the intended audience.

Page layout typically involves a lot of placement, rearranging and formatting of elements. Many designers approach this process organically, feeling their way to a pleasing end result. While this can lead to some excellent happy accidents, there is a risk that using a free-form methodology can result in a lack of visual balance on the page.

According to the 2010 U.S. census, the Hispanic population has reached50.5 million people

‘as lit-tle as we know about technical communication in other countries, it isstartling how little research has been done on subcultures within the

While theseissues often are overlooked, go unnoticed, or are silenced, the articlesincluded in this special issue ofJBTCdemonstrate the prominence, andmuch-needed analysis, of race, ethnicity, and multiculturalism in technicalcommunication.

While thenation has shown progress by electing its first African-American president,the education, employment, income, and health disparities between WhiteAmericans and historically marginalized groups still exist.

Even though (or quite possibly because) race as a concept and therebyracism still exist, many people, if not color-blind, avoid topics of race, eth-nicity, and culture in their daily conversations.

As Bonilla-Silva (2003)and others have shown, the color-blind ideology is false and usually trans-lates into societal practices that build on and bestow neutral WEA cultural,linguistic, and racial knowledge.

For example, in some technical communica-tion classes, as in most classes, instructors adopt a color-blind perspective,reiterating the sentiment that race has no place in the classroom

Her sample structured writing curriculum includes four mod-ules: defining structure, structuring content, analyzing content, and reusing content

metadata

there is a glaring lack of involvement in CMS design by technical com-munication practitioners, teachers, and researchers.

Rather than thinking of the end productof their work as tangible products or even documents, they are beginning to see theirefforts as part of an endless flow of information

as a solution to the short-term memory problem, theQuintilian tradition’s view of the physical writing surface as a structured space,and thus a means for visual memory,

ROI

(a) ascontent being complete texts, and presentation being output structure, navigation,and visual style; and (b) as content being content modules, and presentation beingoutput structure, navigation, visual style, and genre definition

Changing the way people work is animmensely difficult task, especially if the changes most clearly benefit the organi-zation while doing nothing clearly beneficial for the individual users

XML

“process of collecting, manag-ing, and publishing information to whatever medium you need”

literacy pedagogy

We decided

epistemology

As lifeworlds become more divergent and their boundaries more blurred, the central fact of language becomes the multiplicity of meanings and their continual intersection

When learners juxtapose different languages, discourses, styles, and approaches, they gain substantively in meta-cognitive and meta-linguistic abilities and in their ability to reflect critically on complex systems and their interactions.

such as electronic mail (Sproull & Kiesler, 1991). These examples of revolutionary changes in technology and the nature of organizations have produced a new language of work.

Document

influence on the ethical decisions of technical communicators, is it because teachers ignore the subject of ethics? If

It depends on who has asked you to evaluate the employee for promotion and why youwant to de-emphasize deficiencies. ”• “ Depends on the size of the font used for the percentages and other characteristics of the graphic. A number of other factors could affect the ‘perceived’ size of each pie slice."• “Whether or not it is ethical depends on the product and the intended users of the product.

consensus

Only 430 people identified their occupation, 420 their sex, and 443 their professional experience and level of education. Relative to the STC membership (Society for Technical Communication 1992), this population has more educators (24% versus 10%), more men (45% versus 38%), more advanced degrees (55% versus 35%), and more job experience (typically 11+ years versus 7 years).

characteristics could be pertinent to the ethics of document design.

Notice that I offer no definition of the word

Code for Communicators”

ou are preparing an annual report for the members of the American Wildlife Association. Included in the report is a pie chart displaying how contributions to the association are used. Each piece of the pie is labeled and its percentage is displayed. In order to de-emphasize the piece of the pie labeled "Administrative Costs," you color this piece green because cool colors make things look smaller. In order to emphasize the piece of the pie labeled "Wildlife Conservation Activities," you color this piece red because hot colors make things look bigger. Is this ethical

ethicalOBLIGATIONS

whereas women are more likely to exercise or integrate a principle of caring (1982, 1987).

Is This Ethical

thus to gain insight on their thinking as well as their actions.

The pilot testing, however, also revealed that students were tentative in judging the seven situations, preferring “mostly ethical” or “mostly unethical” as their answers, whereas the majority of professional communicators chose either “completely ethical” or “completely unethical” as their answers.

“Truthfulness requires that although we condense technical data, we should not misrepresent them to our audience

prospective employer asks job applicants for a one-page resume. In order to include a little more information on your one page, you slightly decrease the type size and the leading (i.e., the horizontal space between lines). Is this ethical?

Editor’s Note:

acknowledge the varied models ofauthorship

Teaching about plagiarism

ecausethey are publicly acknowledged and accepted as true

Plagiarism policies on our campuses

As a result, many students of professionalwriting fear that they may be “stealing,” or com-mitting intellectual “theft,” whenever they make use of anyexisting material in their writing.

I suggest that technical communi-cation instructors rethink the teaching of plagiarism, as itoccurs both in the classroom and in textbooks, by 1) incor-porating discussion of legal definitions of authorship and 2)using analyses of workplace scenarios as a pedagogical tool

hese same technologies are presentedin these examples as inherently dangerous, as causing a“rise” in cases of plagiarism or “making plagiarism tempt-ing.”

he notionthat all writing is inherently collaborative, intertextual, andsocial even from the point of invention (

One basic rule underlies the mechanical steps describedin the rest of this chapter: With the exception of “com-mon knowledge,” you should cite sources for ALL bor-rowed information used in your final document. Thisincludes quotations, paraphrases, and summari

patchwriting”

This four-factor fair use analysis, however, is oftenonly narrowly interpreted in academic settings. One ex-ample is the adoption of the “Agreement on guidelinesfor classroom copying in not-for-profit educational insti-tutions with respect to books and periodicals” (1976),originated by the Ad Hoc Committee of EducationalInstitutions and Organizations on Copyright Law Revi-sion, the Authors League of America, and the Associationof American Publishers. The agreement suggests limita-tions such as allowing only 10% of a prose work to bereproduced.

er or his class,

Scenarios

the fair use clause

Unfortunately, cases of plagiarism are on the rise. Oneof the downsides of online texts, such as websites, is theease of plagiarism. Some students have learned tech-niques of “patchwriting,” in which they cut and pastetext from the Internet and then revise it into a docu-ment. This kind of writing is highly vulnerable tocharges of plagiarism, so it should be avoided. (1

the Court did not completely close the door on FirstAmendment restriction to copyright.

certiorari

inhibition of content-based speech is scrutinized with much stricterstandards

CTEA

intellectual property provision and its goals,then deconstructs the Supreme Court’s decision inEldred v. Ashcroftas a means tounravel the pieces in the complex relationship among the constitutional provision,the First Amendment, and copyright.

favoring greater public access in the future

interpreted by the Supreme Court’s decision inEldredv. Ashcroft

intellectual property

intellectual property clause

“The Congress shallhave the power...toPromote the Progress of Science and the useful Arts, by secur-ing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respec-tive writings and Discoveries

Rationale: W

Flowcharts help writers showthe steps in a process

Bar graphs

Line graphs

These documents include websites, magazines, photographicessays, and multimedia presentations. In any of these situations,

In effective G e n e ric Headings

Using Visuals to Inform & Persuade: HeadingsHeadings help document navigation and introduce and describe the ideas contained in eac section

This presentation discusses five ways in which visuals inform

typography,

•Information graphics:

QUICKLIST FOR DISPLAYING INFORMATION ON THE WEB

USING ANIMATIO

Further confusing the interpretation of iconic signs is the simple fact that, even within a single culture or dis­course community, the logic of the system by which a sign is mapped onto a referent often differs from sign to sign— even in the same icon set. In other words, some icons may be representational, some analogical, some metaphorical, and so on. Does a sign showing a knife, fork, and spoon denote a shop selling silverware or a restaurant? Most icon sets comprise a mix of mapping systems and seldom pro­vide any clues to the user as to which logical relationship is to be used for which icon.Finally, icons are not particularly' good at standing in for verbs (predication). When they attempt to convey action, they typically do so by showing the results of it. Many' actions in a digital environment, however, have no picturable results, and icons then often become no more than little picture puzzles that confuse rather than inform. Other claims include those that icons increase search speed and that they are more memorable than text. This section exa

Supplement visuals with explanatory text ortext labels

Major headings, for ex­ample, might be larger or bolder than subordinate headings, or might be centered or displayed in caps.

Except, perhaps, for headings, avoid lines oftype shorter than 40 characters and longer than60 characters

3.4 Avoid setting type in all caps

Both bold and italic typefaces are used for emphasis and, consequently, should be used sparingly. Bold and italic letterforms also are often poorly formed on a screen—bold because the algorithm that creates them may simply add pixels to a letterform designed for and intended to be displayed at normal stroke widths; and italic because the oblique orientation of the letterforms doesn’t mesh well with the constraints of a vertically and horizontally oriented pixel grid.

3.2 Use 12- to 14-point type for continuous text

NSURING THAT TEXT IS READAB

3.1 Use sans serif typefaces for display onscreen.

s Dillon (1994) notes, the basic finding that people do, indeed, read more slowly from monitors appears to be disappearing as the quality of text displayed on screens improves.

Sequences can be “coded” w7ith letters or number

Consistency7 has some other advantages for the user, as well. A consistent format speeds searching—it sets up expec­tations about where certain kinds of information or elements such as menus, navigation aids, or site maps can be found (Tullis 1988). Consistency, then, should exist not just within individual screens but among all screens in a Web site; there­fore, secondary7 screens should be logically, visually, and structurally derivative of home or primary page

Graphically reveal the relative levels ofimportance among elements or groups ofelements in a display

Space is a particularly compelling tool for organizing a display because the visual system automati­cally attempts to group elements that are close together. In fact, elements that fall within five degrees of visual angle (an area that can be processed by the eyes in a single fixation, and one that roughly corresponds to an area equivalent to six or seven lines of single spaced type, 12—14 characters long at a viewing distance of about 18 to 20 inches [45.7 to 50.8 cm]) appear to be grouped automati­cally.

The display problem is not qualitatively differ­ent from that confronted by the designer of a paper docu­ment, but certainly the parameters within which the de­signer of a screen must work may well be narrower simply

Good design reveals structure when it visually mimics the logical relationships that exist among elements in a display. The human visual system attempts to find the structure of information—whether in a scene, on a page, or on a screen—very early in its efforts to process it, and it does so by looking for visual patterns. Importantly, the processing that occurs in this first stage of perception—a stage that takes only a few fractions of a second—occurs automatically and in such a way that interpretation of the display is dictated largely by the characteristics of the dis­play itself rather than by the viewer’s prior knowledge or expectations (Bruce and Green 1990; Goldstein 1996; Wade and Swanston 1991).

Blue is an acceptable background color for other rea­sons, as well. First, while only about four percent of the color-sensitive photoreceptors (cones) lining the inside surface of the eye (the retina) are sensitive to short-wave­length light, they are nevertheless distributed farther into the periphery7 (60 degrees) than are those cones sensitive to medium and long wavelengths. The cones we have that can process blue color, consequently', are relatively far apart, making it difficult for the eye to see distracting patterns (to find boundaries, in other words) in a blue background. (Lansdale and Ormerod 1994; Sekuler and Blake 1990; Thorell and Smith 1990)

figure where there isn’t one. Backgrounds, consequently, should be, as far as possible, devoid of pattern or, if esthetic considerations demand that they be patterned, be very7 subtle or muted (Lynch and Horton 1999)

f a display must consist of very' small colored elements, however, the detectability and discrim- inability of those elements can be improved to a limited degree by displaying them on a black, rather than white, background. (Thorell and Smith 1990)

pro

on

The ability to separate structure from presentation is particularly useful in this regard.

Montfort’s point is historical, but screen essentialism also obscures the diversity of contemporary interfaces used by people with disabilities and, increasingly, by all people.

“Crowdsourcing” is a term coined by Jeff Howe in 2006 to describe online projects that make use of free or extremely inexpensive labor provided by “enthusiasts” around the world who are interested in donating their time to a project that interests them.

The Web Accessibility Initiative of the World Wide Web Consortium

In addition to the United States, the list of nations with laws or policies requiring web accessibility includes Australia, Canada, Germany, Israel, India, Italy, Ireland, Japan, Korea, Portugal, and Spain

Whether in a physical or a digital environment, designers are always making choices about accessibility.

We classify some software and hardware tools as “assistive technology”—sometimes the term “adaptive technology” is used instead—because they have been designed specifically to assist those people with “special needs.”

She demonstrated this software for me, and I was surprised by how quickly the words were spoken by the synthesized voice that came from her laptop’s speakers. In fact, I could not understand anything at all that she was doing.

It is imperative that digital humanities work take into account the important insights of disability studies in the humanities, an interdisciplinary field that considers disability “not so much a property of bodies as a product of cultural rules about what bodies should be or do,” in the words of Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, a prominent figure in the field (6).

To do so, we needed to think about the needs of people who are blind, have low vision, or have difficulty navigating because of the clutter that often accumulates on web pages.

universal design is efficient

First, ensuring that digital resources created with federal funding are accessible is the law in many countries.

Something created to assist a person with a disability—to make their environment more accessible in some way—might not be affordable or aesthetically pleasing even if it is usable and helpful. Something created using universal design principles, on the other hand, is designed “for a very broad definition of user that encourages attractive, marketable products that are more usable by everyone” (Mace).

Mace argues for the importance of distinguishing between universal design principles and accessibility principles. To embrace accessibility is to focus design efforts on people who are disabled, ensuring that all barriers have been removed. To embrace universal design, by contrast, is to focus “not specifically on people with disabilities, but all people” (Mace).

Wendy Chisolm and Matt May write that to embrace universal design principles is to “approach every problem …with the ultimate goal of providing the greatest benefit to the greatest number of people possible” (2).

The term “universal design” was invented by architect Ronald Mace, founder of North Carolina State University’s (NCSU) Center for Universal Design. According to the NCSU College of Design, the term “describe[s] the concept of designing all products and the built environment to be aesthetic and usable to the greatest extent possible by everyone, regardless of their age, ability, or status in life” (“Ronald L. Mace”).

In fact, such tools actually do the work of disabling people by preventing them from using digital resources altogether.

While professionals working in educational technology and commercial web design have made significant progress in meeting the needs of such users, the humanities scholars creating digital projects all too often fail to take these needs into account. This situation would be much improved if more projects embraced the concept of universal design, the idea that we should always keep the largest possible audience in mind as we make design decisions, ensuring that our final product serves the needs of those with disabilities as well as those without.

What has remained neglected for the most part, however, are the needs of people with disabilities. As a result, many of the otherwise most valuable digital resources are useless for people who are—for example—deaf or hard of hearing, as well as for people who are blind, have low vision, or have difficulty distinguishing particular colors.

Digital knowledge tools that assume everyone approaches information with the same abilities and using the same methods risk excluding a large percentage of people.

In its temporal deferral, UD replicates the unrealized futurity of disability itself. As Robert McRuer notes, disability does not designate a subset of humanity but a spectral prospect that haunts everyone: “If we live long enough, disability is the one identity that we all inhabit” (200).[3] In its deferred arrival, UD, like disability, conjures an elusive future.

One of the authors, Richard H. Godden, considers how particular experience of disability shapes his use of media and also informs his reactions to prescriptive statements about the use of technology; the other author, Jonathan Hsy, writes as a nondisabled ally who considers some of the discursive and practical complications that arise in efforts to make the web more accessible to people with disabilities. We come from different perspectives, yet both of us ask what it means for any community to establish “best practices” for technology use. Even the most well-intentioned universalist discourses risk effacing crucial particularities of embodied experience.

While we agree UD is an unachievable goal, we would argue that the goal itself is problematic and ultimately inadequate to the continuously evolving situation of not only the inclusion of more and more disabled/extraordinary/eccentric bodies into “normal” society but also the ever-shifting ableness of any body as it moves toward inevitable failure.

For example, Williams encourages a reciprocity between user and designer, arguing that “by working to meet the needs of disabled people—and by working with disabled people through usability testing—the digital humanities community will also benefit significantly as it rethinks its assumptions about how digital devices could and should work with and for people.”[17] I would suggest that the goals that animate UD should be and will continue to be a powerful principle in DH, but such a design principle needs to accompany, not supplant, the attention to the particular. Recriprocity could mean mutual care, of and for each other, but it should not need to flatten us out into a universal subject in the process.

As someone with a disability, I feel deeply and urgently the need to be less reliant on other people, but sometimes existing technology can be inadequate—it can break down, be unreliable, or may just be a poor substitution for human help (even if I don’t want that help).

This is, in fact, one of the great benefits of assistive technology and UD – by building environments, physical and digital, that provide barrier-free access, then People with Disabilities can function more independently, and with less reliance on other people

However, I want to suggest that both positions engender a sense of “best practice” that could obscure the specific sociopolitical and embodied orientation of an individual user

As I reflect on that conversation today, I realize that the uneven media functionality of DSDJ presented an awkward social reality for the workshop attendees: much of this Deaf-oriented journal was inaccessible to a hearing majority (i.e., online content was only partially accessible to non-ASL users). As a hearing person who does not know much ASL, I find it intriguing that a commentary section on the topic of audism or “audiocentric privilege” does not provide a link to a PDF that I can read in written English (perhaps one might appear in the future

Media theorist Jane Bringold observes that UD is not a discrete goal but a “Utopian ideal” (47).[1] No platform will ever be accessible across every language (spoken, written, signed), every medium, and every embodied difference (sensory, motor, cognitive).

1. UD is a myth

One participant who abandoned the sorting exercise responded at length inthis vein:You need to spend time with some designers in an office or out in nature.Design just does not work this way. You are attempting to force a hypothesisand its [sic] just not going to work. People will try but this is missing the point.Imagine applying this to a piece of art for example. Art is no different thandesign in fact its the same thing just with a different outcome. You will thensee the absurdity of this process you are trying to force. Visual designcomes[sic] from seeing or rather observing and feeling how a form, colur [sic],texture peaks [sic] your senses and it is then further developed throughrepetative [sic] experimentation. this [sic] process of understanding takesyears to develop and you cannot just formulate rules—there are none. Iwould suggest you personally do something that removes you from theacademic world for a moment and gets you out into the world where youcan use your hands and mind and experience this for yourself. Take a potterycourse or a wood working course, or an elementarygraphic [sic] design course

Two respondents specifically distinguished between “guideline” and“rule,” both saying that situation has an impact on how a design principle shouldbe applied. One elaborated by saying that “Principles are contingent general-izations;. . . their application depends on the particulars of a given situation.” Thissuggests that designers believe design principles should not fully determinespecific design decisions, but can provide a systematic way of thinking aboutthose decisions.

hough a minority, some participants used these questions to express thatthey did not think that design principles are useful or desirable in educationor practice. Most strongly, one design educator said, “You only have to look atsome of the best designs to see that design prescriptions are for fools.” Othersstressed the importance of a good eye. For example, a design educator said, “Itis imperative for designers to trust their eye and design sense over the influ-ences provided by precise measurement, well-meaning computer algorithms and‘hard-n-fast’ rules.”

In addition, I removed one participant from the cluster analysis who sorted allthe cards, but in such a way as to skew the results. With a sharp wit, this participantcreated only two categories: “Byproducts of nuclear decay,” which containedonly one card,radiation; and “What an academic thinks of when he or shemisinterprets design as the synthesis of a set of design principles,” which con-tained all of the remaining cards. I did, however, include this participant’ssurvey responses, as they reflected an attitude toward design that favored artisticsensibility over using more formal methods such as design principles or designresearch. I address this attitude more fully in the conclusion to this article

Specifically, before the exercise I asked some basic questions about partici-pants’current design activities and roles. I also asked—before showing them the38 principles in the exercise, which might bias their responses—what designprinciples they had learned about in their schooling, training, or reading; whatdesign principles they use in practice; and how they would define what a designprinciple is. I worded these questionsto allow a participant to respond that heor she does not know about or has not used design principles. After the exercisegave participants an opportunity to think about design principles, I asked somequestions about when and how we should use design principles, particularlyin relation to the empirical methods of design research.In introducing these survey questions, I asked participants to focus specificallyon visual design principles. All of the questions asked for text responses exceptfor the first pre-survey question, which gave several options of positions fromwhich to choose. I did not require responses to any question except question 1.

If I had used a traditional face-to-face card sorting exercise, however, thenumber of participants would be lower, and they would be less likely to be part ofthe group I wished to study: designers, design educators, and design students.Also, because I have authored a book on document design that includes designprinciples, drawing from my local population might give biased results becausemy colleagues and students have read my book. I also hoped that the surveyquestions would give some qualitative feedback to substitute for the talk-aloudprotocol. Finally, given the exploratory nature of my study, it seemed reasonableto use this online tool to gather information from a broader pool

The primary advantage of this online approach was quick and efficient accessto participants. However, there were two disadvantages. First, in a face-to-facecard sorting exercise, the researcher often observes the participant as he or shesorts the cards and uses the talk-aloud protocol to gather further informationabout participants’ thinking during the exercise. Because I would not attend thecard sorting, this kind of observation was not possible. Second, I would havelittle control over who agreed to participate. The possibility for spam is alwayspresent with online media.

To expand the reach of my study, I used an onlinecard sorting tool, Optimal Sort (http://www.optimalworkshop.com). Instead ofindex cards, this online tool displays digital shapes that participants can dragand drop on screen to create groups, which they can then label (see Figure 2).This tool also allowed participants to provide feedback through before and aftersurvey questions.

Card sorting is typically conducted in one of two ways: closed sort or opensort. In a closed sort, participants sort the cards into predefined categories.In an open sort, participants sort the cards into categories they create themselves.Due to the exploratory nature of my study, I used an open sort so designerscould group the design principles as they saw fit. I also did not require partici-pants to sort all of the cards, but restricted my analysis to those who sorted atleast 75% of the cards

Having determined which design principles are mentioned most commonlyin literature on design, the next question is, how do these design principlesrelate to one another? Rather than arranging the design principles accordingmy own sensibilities or some separate theory (Ahmed [12], Park [13]), Idecided that it would be more interesting to ask practicing designers, designeducators, and design students how they think these 38 visual principles shouldbe grouped.

These results offer some interesting opportunities for reflection. For example,balance, which I have always denigrated to my students as the most vague anddifficult of design principles, actually turns out as the most common, with 27texts (58.7%) listing it. Gestalt itself, despite the very strong influence of thisschool of psychology on two-dimensional design, appeared in only three texts(6.52%), although principles based on the Gestalt laws, includingalignment,proximity,grouping,closure,continuation, andfigure/ground, appeared as wellat a variety of frequencies.

This quantitative review produced a raw list of 198 design principles. Thisnumber might seem discouragingly high except for two outlying works: Leborg[54], which lists 41 principles, 33 of which are unique, and Lidwell et al. [58],which lists 100 principles, 87 of which are unique. Lidwell et al.’s broader focuson “universal principles of design” rather than visual design principles meansthat many of their principles fall outside of the scope of my study. (Some evenstretch the concept of design principle—for example, “uncertainty principle”and “normal distribution.”) If we were to exclude Leborg’s and Lidwell et al.’sunique principles, the list of design principles contracts from 198 to 77—stillhigh, but more reasonable. However, because I included unique principles fromother texts, I retained all of Leborg’s and Lidwell et al.’s principles in the raw list.As might be expected, some of these principles are considerably more commonthan most. Overall, of the 198 principles in the raw list, 160 were mentioned inonly one work. The 198 design principles were listed cumulatively 420 timesin the 46 texts; 61.9% of these listings referred to principles used in at leasttwo works. Despite the large number of unique principles, they were used onlyin 38.1% of texts.

This study took the form of two stages: a quantitative literature review thatcatalogued and analyzed visual design principles mentioned in books and web-sites on design; and a card sorting exercise with survey questions (Texas TechUniversity IRB 100407). The first stage investigated what visual design principlespublished experts recommend most often. The second stage asked designers,design educators, and design students what they thought about design principlesand how they thought design principles related to one another.

So at best, design principles are a kind of lore. Lore is a kind of contingentknowledge based in practice, and as North has argued for composition studies, ithas a value that is often overlooked. However, lore being what it is—anecdotal,implicit, and often idiosyncratic—I think there is good justification to bringresearch to bear on it. Accordingly, in this article I apply empirical techniques tounderstand the lore of design principles more fully.