It's Black, It's White , it's...visual design

What classifies as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ isn’t just black and white.

In Emma Watson’s feature in a two page magazine spread contains a few very interesting visual design elements. Of these elements the most prominent being the use of contrast. Contrast seems to be a uniting theme in this spread showing contrast of firstly, Color; the magazine designer chose black and white, polar opposites.  Black really stands out against the stark white background, making it both easily readable. The lack of color or text around the side of the S really helped give an effective visual rest to the viewer, giving the whole piece a nice balance of really busy looking text and visuals versus the easy-going negative space that actually helps to bring more attention to the text. But the color wasn’t the only thing that made the text stand out, the size of the decorative “S” also draws the eye back to the text. The choice to feature such a large S seems to be in an effort to balance the visual space between Watson’s dark-heavy photo and bring some of the same contrast into the text portion of the spread. The font choice also seems to carry that same balance of contrast, while the header and sub head have a somewhat formal, fancy, almost cursive-esque look to them while on the other hand the body copy has more of a standard, easily readable,  appropriate for any occasion kind of sturdiness to it. Fonts, size and color; Contrast seems to be the theme of the piece as the text at the top of the page details Emma Watson’s life contrasting from her childhood role playing the “Geeky” Hermione to the model, student and activist she is today. 

Diagonals get the job done, AND get the job.

Resumes are typically pretty boring, but they don’t have to be. In Christina Jones’ resume she made not only a resume that was visually exciting but professional-looking. The diagonal I is also very effective at garnering attention and it also serves as a functional ‘frame’ for the text on either side. Something about putting text at an angle makes the information contained seem so much more important. It’s not unintentional; The eyes of English-speakers typically read from left to right along a horizontal line, this is largely the norm. The position of putting the text at a diagonal slant was effective in making the reader’s eyes pay attention just a little bit more to read, therefore tricking their brain into thinking the information may be more important than it is. Additionally the unconventional angle of the texts adds a sizable amount of white space into the design. Whether intentional or not, the white space adds balance and gives the eyes some ‘breathing room’ from all the information contained in the text.