Space

According to the article on space, it is important for the designer to have a reason for using a lot of white space or filling up the white space. And the reason needs to be fairly easy for the reader to pick up on. Centered images and unused white space can be boring, but a design with an image going off the page or bleeding onto another page is more interesting to grab the reader's attention. For our pamphlet project, we should not use centered images, because this would not grab a student's attention when obvioiusly, we want them to read about the English department. Depending on how the design is set up, the amount of white space used (or not used) is important. There are many different kinds of space. If space looks like it was just left white for no reason, the design does not look complete and is not going to draw attention. However, if the space is used in a way that illustrates a certain mindset (if there is a reason for the white space to be left blank or filled up) the design may seem more interesting.

Space

Though the article touches on several different subjects regarding space, the basic idea is that you need to find just the right balance for what you're trying to convey. If you want to convey a feeling of desolation or loneliness, a smaller image on a predominately solid-white page would work best. On the other hand, if you want energy or chaos, you would want to use a minimum of white space. For our pamphlet project, I think we need to find a good balance in between the two. We don't want the English department to look depressing or boring, but at the same time we don't want to dissuade the reader with too much imagery. I do think it would be safer to err on the side having too little white space than too much. Pamphlets aren't necessarily designed to be artistic or minimalist, they're intended to grab your attention and then give you information.

Space, our final frontier.

I swear that the writers of "Space" set me up. I began reading with our upcoming project in mind and they seemed to focus on 'white space.' I started thinking, "Oh yeah! We can make our pamphlet all white with a big horizontal slash of blue in it to get people's attention." Reading further they begin to talk about not using too much white and the abuses of space and graphics/color. So I immediately felt a reprimand and desire to rethink a design for the pamphlet. I thought of a design element formed by empty space rather than drawn- such as was suggested in the figures vs (back)grounds section. Essentially the color would form a silhouette symbol that would be centered on the cover of the pamphlet. The article proceeded to chastise the use of everything in the center. I rethought the design a decided that the silhouette could have one half on the front cover and the other on the back cover. This effect would link the image when the pamphlet is closed or opened conversely. Heaven forbid we center it. =)) The article addressed lettering that we have already studied with the obvious focus on space. It wasn't too different from the modernist article but should be given due attention with a focus on space. I was thinking of the actual information within the pages. Some really important parts could be a different typeset and size. Blank space around them would help. Additionally the message doesn't have to follow the columns as long as the established grid reading rules are kept.