Newsletter 019
The Symphony Way: Flows and Presentations by Our Designers vol. 2
In the previous newsletter, we started using our designers’ material for educational purposes. Our aim is to show you examples of how presentations and flows can be done in a fairly simple manner without too much trouble. Our designers, Miroslav and Srđan, held an internal flow that we are using in these two newsletters to show you some tips and tricks on how to make the most out of yours.
In Newsletter 018, we discussed the visual part of flows and presentations, but the time has come for us to include other specifics, as well. The devil is in the detail, indeed, so let’s grab it by the tail and tackle this issue both from the theoretical and empirical point of view. Thanks to Srđan Španović — you can check out his work at Dribble and his own web presentation — learning about typography has never been easier.
Fix Yo Design, Srđan says
While Miroslav provided us with beautiful, powerful, and elegant visuals, Srđan will add to his work by pointing out the (not so) obvious in-slide elements. The first list of important features to consider includes:
- typeface choice — learn about the brand you are writing about/company you are writing for and align your choice accordingly; choose two fonts max.
- size — two/three font sizes for body and titles max;
- weight — two/three weights; regular, semibold, and bold are enough;
- tracking (letter-spacing) — distribute spaces between letters evenly;
- leading (line-spacing) — distribute spaces between lines evenly.
And why are these points important? Well, an average reader will approach a text in this way:
Following the aforementioned advice on typographic features will help you highlight those parts you want your audience to pay attention to. It’s all about signposting (a.k.a. guiding your audience through your presentation/speech/writing by using certain words and expressions that tell them what’s following. For example — now you are expecting to get an example, right? That’s one signposting example among many others that you can use.)
Design Principles
Having discussed the basic, Srđan revealed seven design principles to hold on to:
1. Emphasis: To grab readers’ attention, you can use different elements such as colors, lines, weight, sizing, etc. But don’t overuse them and don’t focus on everything. Same like in school days — you can’t just highlight the whole book; the point is to narrow down the focus on the most important info.
3. Contrast: To create visual hierarchies, use different colors, textures, sizes, and shapes. It helps differentiate between different sections.
4. Repetition: If we use repeated elements on a layout, we create a pleasing image for all the readers. That also helps to predict where certain info will be found.
5. Proportion: This segment is mostly connected to the scale and size when two elements are compared. Again, the focus is on pointing out the contrast we want to achieve between elements.
6. Unity: A harmony produced by all the elements in a design piece. One example are groupings of icons on our phones — if we group them according to their organic function (e.g. all apps we use for music) and then arrange them so that the colors match, they will all look as if they belong together.
7. White space: It is concerned with what we don’t add, i.e. the empty space around everything else in our composition.
Bonus question: How many elements do you see in the picture?
.
.
The answer is — three. The plant, the text, and the white space surrounding both of them.
One thing that we can conclude from both Srđan’s and Miroslav’s part of the presentation is that simplicity is king, especially when we talk about flows and presentations. Write down the most important things and leave the rest for your speech — that way the audience will find it simple to find focus and enjoy your presentation at the same time.
Next week we are closing the designers’ section of this series, so stay tuned for the grand finale.
Take care!
