Fonts and Colours

According to Laura Franz in her book Typographic Web Design (2010), fonts have the ability to communicate both emotion and logic if paired appropriately with content. Thus fonts should play a supportive role to author’s words. With this in mind I wanted the fonts in my blog to be simple yet alluring to the reader’s eye. Thus I set out in search of the perfect font.

Cracked is an interesting and funny blog, which took both a sarcastic and serious approach to the power of fonts. They suggests to use fonts such as Calibri, Georgia, Tahoma, Verdana and Univers, because they ‘inexplicably cause joy’. However, it was not until I tried to experiment with these fonts that my quest came to a halt – I had to pay to change the theme font of my blog. This posed me with the question – Food for a week or an awesome font?? I opted for food over font and thus began looking for reasons as to why the theme font of my blog is awesome.

Firstly the font is cross between Calibri and Tahoma – this makes it highly legible and unlikely that readers will be deterred from reading what I have to say. Although it is suggested that people prefer reading continuous prose in serif fonts, sans serif looks more modern, suggesting that I am up to date with society and responsive to change.

The title of my blog is a slightly more out there font, written in all caps, giving it importance, status and meaning. This is significant as the title of my blog ‘Project Carley’ represents what the entire blog is about – ME. Furthermore the italic style of the font and the brown colour gives my blog a humanist, organic and personal feel as it looks like handwriting. This ensures I come across as unique, passionate and true to what I am saying.

The light yellow background of my blog represents joy, freshness and intellect. For more general purposes, it makes the black writing of my posts stand out.  The light pink colour of the menu’s and some writings symbolises compassion, good health, insightfulness and empathy. It combines the power of red with openness and purity of white – this reflects someone who is assertive in their way of working (expresses what they want but is open to others ideas and to compromise). Originally I wanted the light pink to be orange as it represents energy and balance and demands attention! However, I was unable to change the colour of the menu without changing the colour of my brown title (I wanted it to remain brown so it stands out, and still reflects certain qualities). Therefore I decided to stick with light pink!

Reference List

Cracked. 2013. ‘Fonts’. Accessed on September 2^nd, 2013 from, http://www.cracked.com/funny-5647-fonts/

Franz, Laura. 2010. Chpt 2 Aesthetics and Emotions. Typographic Web Design. http://www.typographicwebdesign.com/pdfs/aesthetics_twd.pdf

Empower-Yourself-With-Colour-Psychology.com. 2011. Light Pink. http://www.empower-yourself-with-color-psychology.com/color-pink.html

Mikes Anime Open. 2001. Symbolism. http://www.three-musketeers.net/mike/colors.html