Here at Geoff Matheson Studio, we work hard and strive to create meaningful, functional design that looks great. Our designs – regardless of whether for a website, a logo or a business card – go through a process, the design process. Although the specifics of the process are a safely guarded family recipe, it involves research, experimentation and implementation. Lots of decisions need to be made, and each decision is carefully considered and well thought out. Every decision, and every aspect of a design needs to make sense. This is the point behind graphic design – to create a functional piece that serves a purpose and communicates a message. A successful graphic design will communicate this message and convey the appropriate feeling to the intended audience, with the hope of that audience performing the intended action. Each piece of a good design works together to convey this feeling and message – from color choice to images to typography and so much more. Therefore, each of these elements needs to be well thought out and properly executed. If any part of a design does not make sense, or fit with the intended message, it is not successful. To me, this mostly seems to be common sense. A designer should choose the right font or image or color for that specific project. You choose the right tool for the job.
This leads me to my point. There is so much design out there that just does not make sense, and I don’t understand how anyone would make certain choices. Now, I understand that a lot of sites are not done by a professional, nor are really designed. But someone made these awful decisions, and thought it was a good idea for one reason or another. I would love to list out a lot of examples and talk badly about other people’s websites and designs, knocking them and telling everyone how wonderful I am, but that is not really the point either. The point is that we can learn from bad design, with the intent of creating a more beautiful web and graphic landscape. And I know that everyone reading this will probably recall several experiences where they’ve seen design that just does not make sense. It might not be a bad design, but just contained terrible elements that make you wonder “what the hell were they thinking?!”
All of this bad design can be beneficial for us designers, as it makes our job that much easier to create a beautiful design from a terrible one. We instantly see the errors and silly decisions, and can fix them with the greatest of ease. This brings me to one example that I see all the time. Comic Sans and typography in general. This font is way over used, and used in the strangest of circumstances. I recently started a project with a new client, who deals in the wedding industry. Their site used Comic Sans everywhere! I was baffled by this and thought “who chose this font?” – I asked the client, and it was chosen by a large web design agency. Unbelievable. Now, I’m not going to go on a tangent specifically about Comic Sans, but just the fact that it was the wrong choice of font for this type of website. Any website for a business involved in the wedding industry, should appear elegant, classical or even modern. A beautiful script face, traditional serif face or even sans serif for body copy would be appropriate.. but certainly not Comic Sans. How can anyone not see that? Would a bride-to-be write up their wedding invitations using Comic Sans? I think not.
Then I finished up another site for a client in the land developing, land surveying and civil engineering industry. We worked hard to make the site appear professional and to properly represent a 21st century, contemporary business. We used sans serif type for everything, using Univers in their logo lockup, and found a wonderful, slightly avant-garde sans serif typeface for the headers. Sans serif is the way to go for this type of site. While browsing around sites of their competitors, I found a site for a construction company that is shotty-at-best and uses Comic Sans for it’s type! Oh-My-God! This use of such a silly, handwritten-type font is just downright ghastly. How can anyone take the site serious when it looks like a comic book?
Now I’m sure lots of people are thinking to themselves “no one notices what font a website is in, except you.” True. However, it is not about the general public noticing what font a particular site is set in, but moreso about what that font conveys and communicates. You may look at this site, set in Comic Sans, and think “this site is not professional at all,” and you may not be able to put your finger on what about it makes it look unprofessional, but it is these small details that contribute to this awful communication. (And font choice is certainly not a small detail).
So, I end this post by saying, choose your fonts carefully. Each face communicates a specific feeling and should be used as a tool to communicate the overall message. On one hand, it disappoints me that people, especially designers, don’t notice these things as common sense. But on the other, it makes me feel good (probably a negative thing) that so many people out there just downright suck at designing sites, which allows me to swoop in and take these clients by the hand and lead them to the wonderful world of beautiful design that, say it with me… “makes sense!”
