The Work Continues

I am still working on my final assignment. As of right now, it is not a finished product, but I have made several changes to the website.

First, I removed the wood panels from the sidebar and footer, and changed the website’s color scheme in the process. Silver and white not only calls to Mad Men’s Sterling-Cooper-Draper but also gives, I think, a sophisticated air to the project. Moreover, I scaled back on the orange. The orange is a softer shade, but I have limited the color to select portions of the logo and to the sidebar’s hover.

My rationale for this is two-fold. First, I limited the use of orange as a means of adding subtlety to the design. It still connects to my topic on the Orioles, but it is not as in-your-face as previous iterations of the project. Second, with the logo, I only used orange for select portions of the title. The decision had its impetus behind Mad Men, but I also wanted to convey certain psychological emotions as well. In March 2011, Jason Beaird blogged about “The Psychology of Color.” Beaird maintained that orange not only conveyed energy, but also conveyed emotions of happiness. Thus, I used orange for the words “Happy” and “Orioles.” Happy is an obvious choice, but, with the Orioles, I did it because it provided symmetry and highlighted the exhilaration the team instilled in a divided city. The rest of the title is in black, which provoked darkness, elegance, and thought. Lastly, I used drop shadows and outside glow on the logo’s text.

With the logo in mind, I removed the original color scheme and photo layout. I instead used a photo of the Baltimore skyline from the mid-1960s. Through Photoshop, I blended different portions of the picture together and used a neon glow to give the overall image a psychedelic-mid-1960s feel. In a way, the image looks like a triple-exposure, which characterized some of the films of the 1960s (i.e. Jack Nicholson-penned “Head”).

The one problem I am currently encountering is the background image I am using. I placed an image of the same Baltimore-skyline as the page’s background image. In places, I feel it works well. My concern, however, is that the image stretches based on the size of the page. If the page is too long, then the background image stretches and looks off. I am still working on looking for a way of freezing the image so it does not stretch on the long pages. Other than that, I am becoming increasingly pleased with how my page is shaping up.

Good luck on finishing your projects!

Updated Design Page

I want to start off by thanking both Stephanie and Geoff for their wonderful comments on my design page. I am grateful for their kind words and their helpful suggestions!

With their comments in mind, I updated my design page. The first thing was to switch fonts on both the sidebar and footer. Instead of using Alternate Gothic No. 1D, I am now using Proxima Nova. Unlike Alternate Gothic, Proxima Nova does not require large font-sizes in order to improve visibility. I can use a 1.1 em font here, whereas Alternate Gothic required a 1.7em. With the fonts changed, I reversed the order of the text in the body of my page. I provided information about my site first, and then briefly described how the 1966 Orioles interacted with the story of racial tension in Baltimore.

The changes I made with the font and text enabled me to remove some of the white space at the bottom of my initial page. While the process of removing the white space is not difficult in and of itself, the difficulty comes from having to gauge the size of other parts of the page. For example, I had to account for the size of my embedded fonts, which was difficult because I could not see them until I uploaded the page online. The process was trial and error, but I ultimately got everything to work out.

Lastly, I re-worked the wood pattern image in my footer in an effort to remove any disconnect with the sidebar image. Because my sidebar image operates on the “repeat-y” command, the size of the overall page determines the image’s endpoint. Thus, I had to incorporate my other changes first. The changes established the endpoint for the sidebar image, and, with that endpoint, I went into Photoshop, saved a new version of the wood pattern, and cropped the image so the footer would pick up where the sidebar left out. Like with removing the white space, this was a process of trial and error. It took me several attempts to get it right. Looking at the new design page, I really like how the sidebar blends with the footer.

Addendum:

I commented on David’s Preliminary Final Project.

Design Assignment

Here is my Design Assignment.

In developing my design page, I wanted to strike a balance when setting the mood of the mid-1960s. People tend to view the 1960s from the perspective of peace, love, flower power, and lava lamps, though the popularity of shows like Mad Men is changing that. Still, I wanted to strike a balance between the clean, smooth, symmetrical shapes of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce and the tension that defined the time period. It proved to be a daunting challenge, but one that I feel turned out quite well.

First, I wanted to develop a certain contrast in the fonts I selected. Jason Santa Maria noted that “[v]ery different typefaces can play off of each other in complementary ways or resist each other to create a bit of tension, while typefaces that appear too similar can weaken the message and confuse a design’s visual language.” For the design assignment, I selected Proxima Nova and Alternate Gothic No. 1D as my fonts. Both fonts have a certain 1960s aura to them, but they also contrast against each other. Proxima Nova, for instance, served as one of the fonts that made up the design for the 1962 Atlantis World Fair design. Meanwhile, Alternate Gothic No. 1D characterizes some of the fonts that appeared on 1960s movie posters. The robust quality of the font as well as the slightly unaligned letters match the style (though not the degree) of The Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night. This contrasts from the thin, smooth, and even qualities of Proxima Nova.

At the same time, I also wanted to establish a design element that connected my page to baseball. I therefore used a wood pattern for the sidebar, navigation, and footer. Of course, the wood pattern symbolizes the markings of a baseball bat. The bat, in turn, symbolizes the offensive prowess which defined Frank Robinson’s Triple Crown season in 1966, as he led the American League in batting average, home runs, and runs batted in (R.B.I.). In installing a wood pattern on my page, I used CSS to repeat the pattern along the page’s x-axis and y-axis. The repeating of the wood pattern offered a subtle replication of a lava lamp in motion, further promoting the 1960s feel of the page.

Lastly, I made a conscious choice to use only black-and-white photographs for the page. Color photos certainly exist of 1966 Baltimore and the Orioles. However, I feel that black-and-white images offer a subtle, sophisticated look at the topic. One of my long-standing concerns is that people will not seriously look at how baseball can influence or symbolize major shifts in America’s social climate. While Jules Tygiel in Baseball’s Great Experiment connected Jackie Robinson to the civil rights movement of the 1950s, Frank Robinson represented a shift in how white and black Americans approached civil rights in the mid-1960s. This shift represents an important turn, and, by using black-and-white images, I feel that I am conveying to my visitors that this topic should be taken seriously.

Moreover, the pictures I used further connected the three important themes outlined in my research on the 1966 Orioles. Robinson, obviously, represented the central figure in the narrative. Through Robinson, the Orioles became champions. The image of Robinson holding his awards highlighted his importance to the team. Because one of the awards was the American League Triple Crown, the picture also symbolizes his offensive skill, connecting him to the wood pattern displayed in other parts of the page. Meanwhile, the photo of Mayor Theodore R. McKeldin highlights the intersection between baseball, civil rights, and white backlash. McKeldin had long been an advocate for civil rights, and, in the fall of 1966, he worked to promote Robinson as a means of achieving social gains and racial harmony in Baltimore. Yet, McKeldin did not succeed, highlighting the limits of sports and the strength of white backlash as a social force in the mid-1960s. McKeldin would leave office a year later.

I am looking forward to your comments on how I can improve my design page!

Addendum:

I commented on Sheri’s Design Assignment.

Every Picture Tells a Story

In White Space is Not Your Enemy, Kim Golombisky and Rebecca Hagen maintained that design represented visual culture’s driving force. Design not only needed to look visually appealing (i.e. avoiding tacky type emphasis), but also had to guide viewers to the presented materials. In the process, Golombisky and Hagen showed that design had a communicative power that can advance a designer’s message, whether through a design’s rhythm or through its unity as all parts work together. Designers, for example, can create tension in their works simply by positioning two pieces of text against each other, or using two distinctive forms of font. By the same token, designers can lend an air of sophistication to their topic through the use of a soft color design or a smooth font.

Edward R. Tufte further advances the communicative power of design as initially described by Golombisky and Hagen. Yet, whereas Golombisky and Hagen use design as a method of presenting the material, Tufte focused on the explanatory power of design through illustrations. Golombisky and Hagen, to be certain, noted that visual designs had the ability to explain certain trends in visual culture. For instance, they noted how people can date a film based on the fashion, décor, and other visual hints. Tufte, however, goes a bit further. He showed that illustrations can offer effective explanations on complicated ideas.

The Challenger tragedy of January 1986 represented one of the more intriguing portions of Tufte’s work. As Tufte explained, shuttle engineers and NASA officials debated the exact cause of the Challenger explosion the night before the accident. Engineers used thirteen charts to raise concerns over whether the shuttle’s O-rings would effectively seal during a cold-weather launch. For instance, Tufte created a data matrix which provided a complete history that correlated temperature to O-ring conditions. The matrix showed that O-rings suffered a damage index high of eleven during a launch of fifty-three degrees Fahrenheit, whereas the damage index decreased at higher temperatures. The Challenger launched amidst temperatures lower than thirty degrees Fahrenheit, and it exploded seventy-three seconds after lift-off. As Tufte noted, O-ring failure can be clearly seen in photographs taken moments before the explosion (38-44).

The Challenger tragedy, though, highlighted a more important point. As Tufte noted, “there are right ways and wrong ways to show data; there are displays that reveal the truth and displays that do not” (45). Shuttle engineers based their concerns on thirteen charts, but only six of them provided information on O-ring temperature, O-ring blow-by, and O-ring damage. Of the remaining seven charts, “six of them included data on either launch temperatures or O-ring anomaly but not both in relation to each other” (45). That the Challenger exploded as a result of O-ring failure during a cold launch magnified the methodological flaws of the engineers’ data displays. Had the engineers presented data that showed a correlation between O-ring damage and cold weather, the take-off could have been postponed, thus saving the lives of the seven astronauts.  The correct display, in short, can facilitate significant consequences.

Horizontal and Vertical Type Tools

When using Photoshop to create a Frank Robinson baseball card, I became familiar with the Horizontal Type Tool. The tool enables users to write information either on the photograph or on a surrounding frame. As someone who cannot draw, and cannot write in a straight line unless writing on notebook paper, the Horizontal Type Tool shows that you do not have to be a poor drawer with poor handwriting to use Photoshop. The tool will immediately establish a straight-line underneath the created text, ensuring that the writing will not be off-line. Once the text has been written, the tool offers flexibility as users can move the entire text around for effective positioning,

The Horizontal Type Tool also has a companion tool for vertical writing. Moreover, both the Horizontal and Vertical Type tools have a masking iteration that can blend text with aspects of the photograph. The tools are helpful, as they will both familiarize members of my audience to important characters in my story.

Addendum: I commented on Geoff’s Synchronize Watches.

I commented on David’s Addendum: Making my own information more accessible.

Updated Type Page

Over the past week, I spent time re-working my Type Assignment and, by extension, the other pages of my site, incorporating the suggestions made in class. Here is my updated Type Page.

One of the first things I did was to increase the overall size of the container. In doing so, I was able to provide significant space for my text, my pictures, and my pull quotes. I also included some padding that separated the text and navigation from the logo. Lastly, I lightened the shade of orange that I used. The changes gave an open feel to the page, which I quite like. It is much more inviting.

I also made several changes to the site’s logo. First, I removed the captions underneath each picture. I also expanded the size of the logo so I could incorporate the title’s tag line. In making both changes, I had enough room to include my full title. My overall goal is to create tension on my page whenever possible. Consequently, I left-aligned “Happy Series, You-all:” and right-aligned “Rights, Resistance, and the 1966 Orioles.” It was difficult to pull off because the main title is much shorter than the sub-title, but I feel that it turned out fairly well.

I also worked to incorporate elements of tension with my pull quotes. For both items, I floated the main quotations to the left, while floating authorship to the right. I also worked to align the pull quotes with page’s margins as well as with adjacent paragraphs. A tedious task to accomplish, it took me some time, but I feel that it turned out well.

The same thing could be said for the photos. First, I shifted the Frank Robinson picture to the left, so that he is facing the text. I also shifted the C.O.R.E. protest picture to the right, as the protesters are facing the text. Second, I incorporated captions into each photo, using the same font and style I used for my pull quotes. My captions followed one basic formula: a short sentence describing the activity in the picture, and a brief sentence that advances the story in a way the main text does not.

My one lament is that I tried to place my pull quotes closer to the pictures, so that a greater connection could be made between the people and the events of the period. However, with the captions, I feared that the page would look too cluttered. Is this a legitimate concern from a design perspective? Would it be possible to place the pull quotes closer to a captioned photo without the page looking too busy or cluttered?

In all, though, I am grateful for the comments that were made on my page. They have been significantly helpful. In looking at all the pages on my site, I am pleased with how they are shaping up. More work remains, but I am happy with the progress so far.

Fear and Control in Photoshop

Balance and flexibility represented overarching themes that dictated the principles of web design and CSS. Yet, through Photoshop, themes of fear and control crystalize. That is not to say that fear and control are not prevalent in other forms of web development and design.  On the contrary, they are, especially as people progress in experience and capability. Photoshop, however, brings these themes to light. Much like developing designs and code, Photoshop can be a bit daunting, especially if you are new to the program. The upside comes with experience and increased skill, as you have greater control over how your photos appear.

At first glance, Photoshop can be a bit daunting. Robin Williams and John Tollett noted that “[t]he seemingly endless list of things you can do in Photoshop can be intimidating and might prevent some non-designers (and designers) from jumping in to learn the program” (13). The “Photoshop interface overview,” for instance, highlights a multitude of tools, options, backgrounds, and layers. The possibilities are vast and therefore a bit overwhelming. As a result, Williams and Tollett noted how their learning process occurred gradually (2-3, 13).

Greater familiarity with Photoshop allows users to have greater control over images than before. For example, users can liven up pictures with a dull exposure by manually adjusting the contrast. If the contrast does not work, users can improve the image by adjusting the vibrance, which saturates the picture’s underrepresented colors. The sponge and dodge tools can also improve a photo’s coloring, allowing users to whiten certain portions of an image. As a result, users now have the ability to alter once-unalterable photos.

Users also have the ability to touch up pictures that aged over the years. When old photos are scanned, they often display dust and scratches. Photoshop can allow users to remove the dust and scratches from the picture through the Healing Brush tool. If a relationship did not age well over the years, Photoshop also allows for the removal of any unwanted person. The Quick Mask tool can enable the removal of any subject, though the difficulty varies per picture. Personally, my favorite tool is the Clone Stamp. The Clone Stamp enables me to replace any unwanted objects or blemishes with clean sections from the image.

Most of all, I personally like how Photoshop can allow a user to break down a picture to its pixelated squares. That, combined with the program’s built-in rulers, can enable a user to incorporate slogans into a photo that account for proper margins, letter-spacing, and line-height. As someone who cannot draw well, this feature alleviates some of the concerns I have implementing text. My drawings are often off-line with uneven spacing and height, no matter how much I try. Yet, with Photoshop, I can control text placement, while not having to worry about uneven lines, margins, and spacing.

There is significant value in knowing that you have control over images and, by extension, the designs you use. Being unfamiliar with aspects of web design and development, the prospects of creating web pages and a website seem daunting. Photoshop is not any different. Yet, comfort grows with each thing you learn. The more you learn, the more you realize you have control over the content at your disposal. You can control where you place your images and your text, all in an effort to control your message. All the power rests in your hands, or on the tips of your fingers through the click of a mouse.

Addendum: I commented on Chris’s post Week 6.

I also commented on David’s Playing with Photoshop.

Fonts and the Purpose of Sports History

Recently, Martin Johnes of Swansea University wrote a paper titled, “What’s the point of sports history?” The paper came out as the United Kingdom and Wales implemented higher annual tuition rates for universities, forcing university officials to take the reactive steps of closing out courses they feel will not attract enough students. As Johnes argued, sports history plays an important role in developing informed communities, providing accessible research materials that can provide societal guidance with contemporary problems.

Johnes noted that the intellectual strength of a community rested on the accessibility of academic material. In the process, he showed that availability of sports-related scholarship through free, online databases such as LA84. Moreover, Johnes noted that sports history can shed a light and offer insights into contemporary issues. Sports history, like other historical fields, explore a past that do not offer clean answers. If anything, Johnes’ interpretation of sports history shows a significant value behind challenging existing mindsets and orthodoxies.

In all, I believe Johnes did a reasonable job in exploring the value behind sports history. However, that Johnes saw the need to prepare a paper outlining the purpose of sports history highlights a more glaring problem. Sports history does not have the reputation as a serious discipline. As universities respond to the financial crisis by preemptively closing poorly-enrolled classes, Johnes’ article seeks to present sports history as a serious discipline worthy of enrollment.

How can scholars present sports history as a sophisticated discipline?

Digital history offers one important vehicle. While sports histories are readily available through free, online databases, most sports historians are behind the curve in making their work available online. The use of new media offers a flexible tool to present scholarship in a new, sophisticated manner. Over the past two weeks, for example, we have examined the importance of type, and how fonts can capture and convey the author’s message or a period’s feeling.

My current website design not only seeks to establish an air of tension, but also the appearance of sophistication. The tension seeks to advance Baltimore’s atmosphere during the mid-1960s, as the quest for additional civil rights met with a growing white resistance. Yet, in also attempting to provide a sophisticated look, I want to present my topic as something that should be taken seriously. That sports history is not a fluff discipline that recites game logs, statistics, and antidotes.

In a way, I feel that I have made progress in achieving that goal through my choice of fonts. Pragmatica Web represents my first font, which exhibits slightly uneven contours that captures the spirit of Baltimore through an aura of grittiness. At the same time, I will be contrasting Pragmatica Web with my second font, Freight Sans Pro. This font has smooth, even contours which gives it a sense of formality. Pairing the two fonts together, my intention is to establish a bit of tension. The slightly uneven contours of Pragmatica compared to the smooth lines of Freight Sans Pro. At the same time, Freight Sans Pro’s formality lends a level of sophistication to my project.

Johnes’ paper infers a concern that many scholars do not take sports history seriously. New media offers a new avenue where scholars can make their work more accessible to the public. Yet, equally important, new media offers sports scholars a new way to convey the seriousness of the discipline through digital tools, showing how sports history can develop an enlightened future through a sophisticated look at a tension-filled past.

Addendum: I commented on John’s post, Text and Color Matchup.

I also commented on David’s post, Playing with Type.

The Image is Clear

Over the past two weeks, balance represented one of the more important themes in creating a visual design. Designers need to strike a balance as they seek to visually communicate with their audience. Guided by elements and principles of strong design, designers must have a good reason to bend or break the rules at hand. The use of font offers a case in point. While fonts offer an opportunity for a designer to evoke an emotional response from their viewers, they must not sacrifice legibility. Balance, in other words, represents a check that protects the design’s overall message.

Yet, CSS3 offers a designer with the flexibility needed in striking that important visual balance, but in a manner that improves the overall quality of the product. Zoe Mickley Gillenwater noted that CSS3 provides users with flexible results. For instance, designers do not have to alter their idea based on a variety of screen sizes. Gillenwater noted that “[y]ou can build pages with flexible images, reasonable text-line lengths, and creative use of space to make sure the design works well at a large range of widths.” In other words, designers do not have to resign themselves to creating plain layouts that work in a variety of screen sizes (207).

The flexible box model further highlights the flexibility of CSS3. In creating a flexbox model, the children of a box are laid out either vertically or horizontally. Designers then have the ability to distribute those boxes equally inside the container, thereby creating a two-dimensional layout. Yet, the model only has limited compatibility as Firefox and Webkit-based browsers only support this method. The limited support proves problematic, but nonetheless shows CSS3’s potential in offering designers the flexibility to create rich visual layouts

CSS3 represents the evolution of visual style through progressive enhancement. According to Gillenwater, CSS3 represents the “delicious enhancements” of a cheeseburger. CSS3 enables designers to take full advantage of everything web browsers have to offer, thereby enriching the user’s visual experience (11-4). From a digital history standpoint, users have a greater opportunity to feel the history presented to them. The tension that comes out in a layout’s color scheme or font selection becomes magnified through CSS3. Moreover, topics that may appear frivolous on the surface can be given proper significance in a digital environment, much more so than on the black-and-white pages of a regular book.

Equally, if not more, importantly, CSS3 highlights the growing importance of placing historical scholarship in a digital medium. Designers have the flexibility to produce the balance necessary to create enriched and progressively enhanced layouts for viewer consumption. Still, the layouts have an increased ability to advance historical arguments, to show the materials used to develop the key points, and to develop the feel and atmosphere of the period. CSS3 shows history’s growth from a monograph medium to a digital one, much like a flat screen television shows how programming has grown from black-and-white to high definition.

Addendum: I commented on Sheri’s post, The Hows and Whys of Learning to Learn.

Get with the Times, New Roman

Digital scholarship offers historians with an opportunity to communicate with their audience through graphic design. Yet, while the main objective of graphic design is to visually communicate with an audience, the same holds true for typeface. Typographers, however, seem to differ on the main purpose of typeface, developing a discussion that illustrates a level of tension. Should typeface be used for legibility, or should it be used to establish a certain atmosphere? If typeface can be used to aid a design’s visual message, then designers should, within reason, use typeface to augment a design’s feel.

Ellen Lupton illustrated the level of tension that exists among typographers regarding the use of fonts. As she noted, “[t]ypefaces…are not bodily gestures – they are manufactured images designed for infinite repetition. The history of typography reflects a continual tension between the hand and the machine, the organic and the geometric, the human body and the abstract system” (13). Lupton’s analysis shows the uncertainty between how type should be used to communicate. On one hand, the argument can be raised that type should be used to convey emotion, or “the gestures of the body.” Or, type can be used to communicate in an efficient, calculated, and geometric manner.

Helvetica illustrates the debate that exists among typographers. Even though Helvetica has a neutral, machine-like quality, the font can be seen everywhere for various reasons. Typographers use Helvetica because many quality typefaces do not exist. At the same time, Helvetica offers a certain balance that improves legibility. Critics argue that Helvetica has become nothing more than a default typeface that does little to evoke emotion. As one typographer noted, advertisements for ripped jeans would exhibit a rugged font. Helvetica would be the font used to promote clothes from the Gap.

Helvetica raises the question of whether type should be used solely for legibility or for expression. With all the fonts that exist, designers have an opportunity to use typeface as a method of creating a certain feeling, a mood or feel. Fonts can offer a project a level of sophistication that can highlight the seriousness of a topic. Equally important, different fonts, when used together, can create a level of tension or lightheartedness that can advance important points of the story or argument.

Yet, that does not mean that designers should sacrifice legibility for the sake of emotion. Wim Crouwel, for instance, published his new alphabet in 1967 (seen below – from Thinking with Type, pg. 28). Doing away with curves, Crouwel’s font has a futuristic feel to it, illustrating the technological advances that characterized post-World War II society. The font conveys a certain feeling and mood. However, the font does not work due to legibility concerns.  Crouwel’s message was not immediately legible, which can be problematic. As Kim Golombisky and Rebecca Hagen noted in last week’s readings, most people want to read the message as quickly as possible. They do not want to spend more time than necessary trying to decipher what the message states. In this regard, Crouwel’s message does not work.

Balance represents an important key. While Helvetica represents a default typeface, type should be able to provoke emotion without sacrificing legibility.  Fonts that can instantly strike a viewer’s emotional senses, while simultaneously conveying the design’s denotative message. This is a difficult task to successfully achieve, but one that must be accomplished in order to fully tap into the vast potential of visual culture.

I commented on Sheri’s post, It’s All in the Details (of the font).

Explore the Space

In reading White Space is Not Your Enemy: A Beginner’s Guide to Communicating Visually Through Graphic, Web & Multimedia Design, I could not help but recall a line from the famous Saturday Night Live “cowbell” sketch, where Christopher Walken’s character states, “[e]xplore the space.”  Visual culture comes with a distinct language and set of rules.  However, designers have an opportunity to bend or break the rules with good reason, thereby advancing visual culture further.  To do so, designers have to “explore the space,” establishing a balance between new ideas and established elements and principles of good design.

Kim Golombisky and Rebecca Hagen deftly showed the flexibility surrounding the rules of visual culture.  While they both stress the importance of knowing the rules of visual design, they also encourage a designer’s curiosity as they seek to find ways of breaking or even bending the rules.  There is a balance at play here.  Instead of breaking visual rules simply to break them, Golombisky and Hagen both stress that designers should have a good reason to do so, as opposed to “out of ignorance.”  Breaking the rules can provide great examples of poor design, but, if done correctly, breaking the rules can also facilitate important innovations in design without forfeiting the message.

Strong design strikes a balance between incorporating the rules and finding instances when the rules do not work.  As a novice, I find myself battling a misconception that innovation comes from the quantity of design.  Yet, Golombisky and Hagen both showed that innovation can come from simplicity.  Busy and incessantly flashing designs do not work, as they appear tacky and detract from the message.  However, the appropriate use of negative space can facilitate a visual message.  The “Shoe Crazy” advertisement (page 44) for instance showed how lines offered a sophisticated tool that separated positive space from negative space, while also creating an image that drove the advertisement’s main point home.  Even though the design appeared basic at first glance, the use of lines as well as negative and positive space presented a much more subtle, but sophisticated design.

Equally important, the design highlighted other important rules, namely using the way people read.  Golombisky and Hagen both stressed how people read a design like they would a book, starting with the upper left-hand corner and ending in the lower right-hand corner.  In the “Shoe Crazy” advertisement, the designer placed the pertinent information in the upper left-hand corner and worked downward.  Viewers moving to the right would see the design of a shopper, apparently having taken part in the sale by leaving the store with shopping bags.  By placing the shopper on the right, the designer gave his or her audience with one more message as they left the page: This shopper can be you.

Ultimately, the importance of visual design is to convey a visual message to your audience.  Visual designs, if done correctly, can convey a sense of emotion, whether it is euphoria, anger, or a call to action.  Moreover, visual designs can convey a sense of feeling, whether it is of humor or tension.  The designer’s objectives, therefore, rests on his or her ability to use visual culture as a means of communicating, to present the client’s desired message.  In a historical context, the objective remains similar.  Historians have an opportunity to “explore the space,” using design as a way of conveying the significance of their research in ways that a traditional book cannot.

I commented on John’s blog.