• Multimedia product depends on text for various reasons
– Page title
– Content of the information
– Label and instruction
– etc.
• Multimedia products depends on text for many things:
– to explain how the application work.
– to guide the user in navigating through the application.
– deliver the information for which the application was designed.
The Most Powerful Text
In multimedia, the most powerful text is one that effectively communicates its message and engages the audience on a profound level. It should be:
• Concise: Gets straight to the point
• Clear: Easy to understand, avoiding ambiguity and complexity
• Relevant: Aligns with the context and purpose of the multimedia product
• Visually Appealing: Uses formatting techniques like
• Bold
• Italics
• Color
• Scannable: It uses
• Headings • Subheadings
• Bullet points
The power of meaning…
• Word must be chosen carefully
– Defined and accurate meaning to describe what you mean
– Word must be chosen to exemplify to a few meaning
• Word appears in titles, menus and navigational aids.
Types terminology
• Typeface: a family of similar characters that may include many sizes and styles
• ARIAL
• Courier
• Times in new romain
• Font: characters of a single size and style, which are part of the same fontface family
• A ‘font’ is a collection of characters of a particular size and style belonging to a particular
typeface family.
• Usually vary by type sizes and styles.
• The sizes are measured in points
• This includes the letter set, the number set, and all of the special characters
• Arial – Arial Italic – Arial size 28
• Arial Narrow
• Times – Times extra – Times bold
• A ‘typeface’ is a family of graphic characters that usually includes many type sizes and styles.
• A typeface contains a series of fonts. For instance, Arial, Arial Black Arial Narrow and Arial Unicode MS are actually 4 fonts under the same family.
• Style: attributes of a font, such as italic, bold, underline, shadow etc.
• Leading: the vertical space between lines of text
• Kerning: the space between two characters
• Adjusting the space between the characters is also called tracking
Cases
• Capital letters are called uppercase
• Small letters are called lowercase
• Text is generally easier to read with mixed uppercase and lowercase letters.
Designing with text
• Boldface is insensitive, so reserve it for headings or similar use.
• Italic text, because of its viewpoint, often render badly at low resolution, making it hard to read
• Consider legibility when choosing font
Text applying guidelines:
Be concise
Use appropriate fonts
Make it readable
Consider type styles and colors
Use restraint and be consistent
Designing menu, icon & buttons
• Menu: choose word with precise meaning
• Icon/symbols : choose icon which has very few meaning for interpretation, or go for something which is globally understood.
• Symbols are considered as visual words
• Icon is the symbolic representation of an object
• Can be useful if language barrier is an issue
• Consider using text label together with icons
• Buttons are objects that make things happen when they are clicked. Animating text
• Animated text can grab attention
• Do not overdo it.
– Too many animation and attention grabbers will distract users attention.
Font Editing and Design Tools
Fontographer is a powerful font editor for Macintosh and Windows.
Making Pretty Text
HYPERTEXT
Hypertext is text that is displayed on a computer or other electronic device with links to other text, which can be accessed by clicking on the link.
The term ‘hypertext’ was coined in 1963 by Ted Nelson.
The most well-known implementation of hypertext is the World Wide Web, which was written in 1990 and released to the internet in 1991.
HYPERLINK
A hyperlink is a clickable connection you see on the webpages or within documents.
It directs you to a new location when clicking on it.
This location can be another webpage, a specific section of the same webpage, or even a different kind of file altogether.
HYPERMEDIA
It is a system that combines different forms of information, like text, graphics, audio, videos, and links them together through hyperlinks.
Hypermedia goes beyond just text. It incorporates various media formats to create a richer and more engaging experience for the user.
Example: World Wide Web
The World Wide Web is the best example of hypermedia applications. Through WWW it is possible to deliver hypertext, graphics, animation and sound between different computer environments. This is because the World Wide Web have the following:
