Syntax and Communication Response

I am also taking a Technical Writing class at the moment WRD 204.  I bring this up, because the crossover of concepts in writing between typography.  The chapters partitions layout between The Word, The Line and Column and Margins.  Similarly,  writing is broken down by The Word,  The Line, and Paragraph levels.  The difference between these only is content versus esthetics.  As a web designer and developer,  this chapter in particular made me think about layout in a different way.  The importance of visual hierarchy and consistency in design make a difference on how the information is presented.  What I found through this chapter is that there are concepts on all three levels.  While the spacing between letters, kerning is important to the appearance on the word level,  the spacing between the overall line, tracking, is similarly important on a line level. One realization that I am coming to in this book is that typography is really art,  which I do not think I felt before I read this chapter.  Letters can play with and against each other because their different stokes.  Contrast and repetition used in typography brings the unity in the design of the letter forms.  The most useful section of the chapter was section on Visual Hierarchy.  The authors illustrate different layouts for the same content.  They showed that changes in the layouts on all levels of the presentation.  This made it easier to see how these changes created a much different view of the information given; moreover, what looks and feels you got from the layouts.  On a final note,  as a web designer,  I got a much better grasp on how these layouts could be used in different context effectively.  Another important point which I appreciated in the chapter was the alignment and how that affected the esthetics of a page. Alignment is something I tend to overlook as a designer.