Seeing that the application date of the college is getting closer and closer, students are also beginning to enter the final preparation stage of the collection of works. However, the font design of the collection is often ignored by everyone, and even sometimes it is not ignored by everyone. It is just that most students majoring in graphic design are not very clear about the role of characters, It is enough to think that the font is clear enough to play a supplementary role, but in fact, the text is a design element with a high frequency of appearance in the work collection. It can be found almost everywhere, including the cover, title, text description, sketch, logo. That is to say, if the font design of our work collection is brilliant enough, it may become a key bonus item in the work collection. How to use the text to help the collection? Today, let's talk about the application of words in the work collection, and tell us from the professional direction what are the key points worth mastering in font design?

　　 From a macro perspective:

First of all, for students applying this year, if you have not completed the design project, unless it is a part of the design work, you don't need to consider designing a group of works from scratch. Although the font with personal style will be brilliant, it also takes time and effort to do well in font design, At this stage, we still need to focus on the project work itself, and we must not be penny wise and pound foolish.

Natural light student font design works

In addition, we should also make it clear that the most important function of words is information transmission, that is, words appear in the composition of the work collection as an aid to the display of works. The font that jumps too far may have the risk of dominating. So for the final stage of typesetting, the text should be as simple as possible, and the content that can be clearly displayed with images should be dominated by images.

Natural light student font design works

This is not only because if we have clear and accurate sketches and research in the early stage, the subsequent design is naturally evolved, and can be understood by the admissions officer without too much text. In addition, for most people's reading habits, when they see pictures and text at the same time, they will automatically choose pictures;

Secondly, in the process of reviewing the collection of works by overseas colleges and universities, due to the large number of applicants from all over the world, the time reserved by the admissions officer for each collection of works will not be too long. In addition, our collection of works is first spread on the computer in the form of page by page small pictures. The admissions officer will roughly browse it, and will click it carefully if interested.

On site photo source of domestic art examination: network

I believe that students with art examination experience can understand this. Therefore, if a large area of text appears under this review process, it will occupy the space for the presentation of visual works, and most importantly, it will also affect the overall aesthetic degree, missing the opportunity to obtain the first impression score of the admissions officer.

So our classmates are Collection layout In the process, we must not use the method of piling up text just because we gather the layout. For example, when we see that the page is relatively empty, we must use the method of piling up text. The purpose of using text in the work collection is to help us explain the design intent simply and clearly at the key turning point.

　　 Different emphases by specialty:

After clarifying the role of characters, we will specify the focus of character application in combination with different professions and cases, and how to select the font design of the collection of works to better play a supporting role:

Pure Art Illustration Department:

Text is very important for the collection of pure art works, because the theme and finished products of such works as installation, illustration and photography are relatively abstract, and the text serves as the explanation of the creators in the collection of works, so we must carefully elaborate the emotions reflected in the works.

In addition, in terms of font selection, we can also deliberately choose fonts with the same tonality with the style of the work. Fonts have personalities, and different fonts will bring us different senses: for example, serif fonts in English will be more retro and emotional, while most sans serif fonts reflect simplicity and solemnity.

Natural light graphic design student works

Many other students will choose handwritten fonts, which will better reflect their personal style, but it is also very difficult. First, handwriting is uncontrollable, while the concentrated text description of works is the fundamental requirement for beauty and fluency, and students should be careful when time is not enough.

However, there is another exception: the interest and roughness of handwriting are very consistent with the style of the work itself, so handwriting can be used as a bonus item.

For example, one of the natural light applicants Huangyi Illustrations Collection For the student who applied for studying abroad, the main items in her works are a group of children's illustrations drawn with colored pencils and a set of manual fabric atlases. Because of the full sense of handwork in her works, her text descriptions and mindmap parts are all written in color lead, and in the font design of her works, the text looks more like a part of her works.

Digital media system:

The digital media major is just the opposite of the pure art department, such as product design, industrial design, service design, etc. The works of these majors are more like a rational derivation process. We draw out the design results gradually through preliminary research, data analysis, subsequent model drawings, experimental tests, etc.

As long as the content is accurate and there is no missing, the pictures can already be seen at a glance. Therefore, we can try to simplify the text of this type of professional collection, mainly focusing on the background introduction and research.

Natural light student font design works

For font selection, our standard is easy to read, because for most digital media professional collections, the content of pictures is already very much. In order to avoid the lack of hierarchy in the overall layout, we can use key fonts to highlight, such as the title, the number of key keys and other parts to enlarge the font size, deepen the color, and the explanation part is as simple and concise as possible.

Zhiyi, a student of product design, has a project named SYMBOLIOSIS/Symbiosis in her works, which is about the new product design of Hui and Han people under the collision of two cultures. Therefore, she extracted many design elements symbolizing regional characteristics, such as silk, copper wire, wool felt, etc.

Because there are many elements involved, it is easy to be heavy in the visual presentation of the work collection. For this reason, she first reserved space for the font by reducing the pictures, and also used low saturation brown in the selection of fonts, and enlarged the word spacing and line spacing. Therefore, the overall picture does not appear messy, but has a sense of space.

Architectural space department:

We all know that most of the design projects of the architectural space specialty are relatively large, and the entire design process contains heavy information. How to arrange the design materials in an orderly manner within the limited pages has always been the focus of our typesetting, and the text plays an essential role in the series.

On the premise of being reasonable and beautiful, typesetting also needs to be magnified as much as possible, so we can try our best to choose pictures and words as aids for subsequent presentation of design results. In the architectural space specialty, the early research highlights logical thinking, so we can use words to elaborate.

Rhythm is the key to the design of large pieces of characters. We can change the size, thickness and paragraphs of characters to highlight the key points according to the logic of thinking, but remember not to use jumping colors to avoid increasing the sense of visual fatigue.

In addition, for the data research part, we can also use the form of chart+text, which will show the research results more intuitively, and also simplify the text part. Pei, a student of natural light interior design, has selected four projects in her works, all of which belong to social and humanistic topics, with a huge amount of research work.

Therefore, in order to avoid the phenomenon that large pieces of text make it difficult to read, she combined many data charts, which not only achieved the function of clearly expressing information, but also alleviated the reading pressure; In order to make the text and data have a certain continuity, the text is aligned up and down with the chart, and the whole picture looks more exquisite.

Today we take three professional types as typical cases to analyze the focus of text application in the composition of works. In fact, there are thousands of font choices, but for students approaching the application date, the key is not what font we should design, but how we grasp the principles of font selection. Through today's case, I also summarized the following points:

1. Text is "auxiliary", with the purpose of highlighting project works;

2. The font selection should match the overall style of typesetting;

3. The text should be as simple as possible, and pictures (charts) should be used to illustrate;

4. The font color and size shall not change too much;

5. Pay attention to details, and grasp the font size, font spacing, paragraph division, and the relationship between words and pictures;

The font design of the collection, how can the text be used to help the collection? Today, the natural light introduced the application and design of fonts in different professional collections. The competition for studying abroad in art is increasing, and each student wants to show the best side as far as possible. Under this high level of competition, the handling of details is also a key point that we can not ignore. Therefore, in the final stage of preparation of the collection, we hope you will cherish the results of the preparation for a long time, Make effective use of the composition and text of the collection, maximize your own advantages, and gain the favor of colleges and universities with a perfect collection of works!

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