Learning to Love Letters--and Leading

A very interesting article on typography. Enjoy!
http://www.creativepro.com/story/feature/21163.html
Well, now i know what my next project is going to be. Fonts from nature... how intresting.

Center of Visual Impact

Imagine yourself reading your daily with that favorite cup of coffee in your hand or browsing through a webpage at free time on your favorite subject. Do you start reading from the left to right, top to bottom, or there is this one thing that attracts your attention first? A colorful photograph or a headline in a comparatively larger font which might not exactly be placed at the left top.
A good designer can actually guide you through the page in a particular way by using different design elements as an attention grabber. This attention grabber is termed as the CVI – Center of Visual Impact, a concept that Mario Garcia writes about in his book Pure Design. CVI is about the use of one visual element that is at least three times larger than others on the page. http://poynter.org/dg.lts/id.33/aid.3251/column.htm
The CVI concept is very important as it plays a major role in shelf visibility of the product. It is not only restricted to News papers or magazines but also proves to be of use in web designing, package designing and Interior designing.
And, yes there should be only one CVI in a page. Else it will lead to confusion.

Of Header and Sub header...

Header and Sub header plays the role of introducing the subject line to the reader. Besides the choice of words or phrasing of the headers, their presentation in a print or web medium has great significance.

The cover design
The main aim behind the cover design is to give a glimpse of what’s there inside thus prompting the reader to buy and browse through. A Serif/Slab Serif is an obvious favorite choice for the title or the name of the magazine. With strong finishing strokes and extensions, these help grab the attention from a distance. Supported generally with a photograph or illustration (very rarely) the cover design template demands attention grabbers. I have rarely seen any magazine follow a standard color pattern on their covers. The color choice will obviously depend on the image the designer chooses. The ideal pattern for the highlight text will be to stick to a single font family with the headers in bold text and the detail text in at least three points smaller in size. Going for different font options or fully upper case creates confusion.

The font size variation (Main text atleast 3points bigger than the rest of the text) plays a important role in the visual appeal of both the cover and the inside pages, be that print or web. I will next talk about a important concept dealing with size variation.