Everything Adrian

LinkedIn Learning Summary

John McWade’s videos on setting perfect text convey very specific advice. While Sean Adams and Ina Saltz both had a looser artistic direction to their courses that could be applied to non-western publications, McWade’s advice is more interesting when applied with the goal of standardization rather than individual or cultural expression. A standardized body of text benefits from an audience already so familiar with its conventions that the medium is invisible and the message is communicated seamlessly, as long as the designer can follow those conventions. 

Knowing this, journalists writing from eastern countries and eastern users engaging with western media outlets can benefit from understanding the subtle details that make up these type standards. Ideally, western users would engage the same way with eastern standards. 

Designers using tools like Adobe In-Design can fine-tune their text automatically and manually. They can increase manually readability with Old Style Caps instead of regular caps. Designers can also apply kerning around “en” and “em” dashes to improve the reader’s flow.  

Automatic systems can apply ligatures for artistic effect, like this typeface did in the first sentence of this paragraph. They can also be tuned to be more or less sensitive to instances of hyphenation.