Text

1
Text

• One of the Building Blocks
• By John Sullivan

2
Communication

• Text and symbols
• 6,000 years ago in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Sumeria,
  and Babylonia put mud tablets and dried in the
  sun.
• Today we have HTML and interactive reading.
• The Power of Meaning
• GO BACK! is more powerful then PREVIOUS
• Browse through a thesaurus

3
Font Wars

• In 1985 the Apple Macintosh computer introduced
  WYSIWYG. Apple used Adobes PostScript outline
  font language. PostScript is really a method of
  describing an image in terms of mathematical
  constructs.
• 1989 Apple Microsoft announced a joint effort
  to develop a better and faster font methodology,
  called TrueType
• Draws at a lower resolution

4
Text the First Step

• Text is one key element in planning and designing
  a multimedia application
• You should determine the font type, size, color
  and amount (next slide)
• It should be appropriate for your theme
• HCI
• Use one style APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.
• No more than two fonts per application

5
Text Formats (typeface)

• Typeface is a family of graphic characters that
  usually includes many type sizes and styles
• Lester (1995) notes that at least 40,000
  typefaces created since Gutenberg's day
• Created in a foundry Microsoft bought their
  fonts from Monotype a foundry
• Fonts are a collection of characters of a single
  size and style.
• Paragraph Formats
• left, right, centered, and justified (right and
  left aligned)
• Scrolling Text
• Special Effects
• WordArt, ULead Cool 3D
• To Draw is to rasterize

6
Special Effects for Text

• Font Editing and Design Tools
• WordArt, Typestyler, Fontographer, and Adobe
  Photoshop
• ResEdit
• FontMonger
• Type-Designer
• FontChameleon
• Making Pretty Text
• Use TypeCaster plug-in for PhotoShop,
  Illustrator, FreeHand
• Fireworks

7
Font Type and Point Sizes

• Two kinds
• Bitmapped fonts
• stored as single characters made of dots that are
  called to the screen as you use them.
• Outline fonts (TrueType fonts), which are
  composed of filled-in outlines
• Both are available in various sizes
• Bitmap problems Platform resizing
• Outline recommended for multimedia

8
Considerations

• What will be the applications playback computer?
• Remove any non-TrueType fonts
• Point size
• Character Formats
• Mathematics, Science, Engineering
• Kerning
• Anti-Aliasing - dithering

9
Text Design Considerations and the Audience

• Single User
• Smaller font size lt 12 points
• Group Users
• Larger font size gt 24 points
• Distance dictates the font size, color, and
  amount of text

10
HCI Tips

• Studies have shown that words and sentences with
  mixed upper- and lowercase letters are easier to
  read than words or sentences in all caps
• Fonts do not look the same in different
  platforms.
• Load fonts using either control panel (fonts) or
  drop them in the Windows sub-directory called
  fonts.
• Experiments show that reading text on a computer
  screen is slower and more difficult

11
Fonts

• Advertiser
• Andy
• Bookman Old Style
• Brush Script
• Federation TNG Title
• IgollCaps
• Mickey
• Techno
• Scooby Doo
• Surfer
• Viking
• Wide Latin

12
Serif versus Sans Serif

• Is the simplest way to categorize a typeface
• sans is French for without
• serif is the little flag or decoration at the end
  of a letter stroke
• Sans Serif is Text (font) without the little flag
  or decoration
• serif Times
• sans serif Arial
• Stay in the same family
• ltFont-style Verdana, Arial, Helvetica,
  san-serifgt
• Always try to embed

13
References

• Lester, Paul, M. Visual Communication Images
  with Messages, Belmont, CA Wadsworth, 1995
• Tannenbaum, Robert, S., Theoretical Foundations
  of Multimedia New York Computer Science Press,
  1998
• Vaughan, Tay, Multimedia Making it Work, New
  York, NY McGraw-Hill, 2001

14
The End

• By John Sullivan