Week 7 (Bad

Week 3 (Bad)

As I have been doing a ton of reading, this week’s items are books. For the bad is an old copy of one of my wife’s favorite authors Bertrice Small. The title is “This Heart Of Mine”, the first issue has to do with the coloration of the text which was a poor choice especially compared to the book by the same author next to it.

As for the text issues the kerning between the “r” and “I” in “Bertrice” should have been expanded as they are too close. Upon further examination the kerning is also an issue between the “r” and “t” in “Bertrice” and the “C” and “e” in “Bertrice”. In her last name the kerning is an issue between the “S” and “m” in her last name “Small”. Another thing that is noticeable is that the “B” of “Bertrice” and the “S” of “Small” extend well below the baseline of the font set. In the title “This Heart Of Mine” has some issues as well beyond the color issue with the background.

The first is that they crammed the title into three lines of the binding of the book. To do this they made the word “This” of a markedly smaller text compared to the rest of the title, and drastically narrowed the leading between it and the next two words. There is something to note of the Capitalization of all the words in the title, all are above the baseline except the last word where the “M” of “Mine” extends well below the baseline. Besides the lead- ing and of course the letter spacing issues of the title and the capitalization of “Of” there is a lack of a proper Em between the “t” of “Heart” and the “O” of “Of”. Altogeth- er a poorly designed book cover for many reasons.

Week 4 (Bad)

I found an advertisement/info board for “Free or low-cost birth control!” which was on a gas pump in Andalusia Ala- bama. My issue with the text is that it is not easily read as it is of a form as though it was handwritten.

The most readable part of this informa- tion sign is the “IT’S YOUR BODY. TAKE CONTROL.” Which is in all caps and done in a sans serif font. Below it is the actual contact information in a smaller font, which logically should be close to if not the same size as the “Free” portion of the signage. Part of the issue with the “Free” and “All services” font is that parts of it are script like, in that they connect to the next letter, but not all of them do. Additionally, the kerning between the “w” in “low” and the “-“ prior to “Cost” is entirely too close to the “w”, its kerning needs to be increased. The spacing be- tween all the largest words is different between each but in the lower text of the same font it is almost entirely even.

Another visual issue lies in the cross stroke of the t in “birth” which connects to the ascender of the “h”, initially the thought is a kerning issue but likely this is just an aspect of the font chosen. There is also an issue with the lower text being light blue with a darker light blue back- ground, it would have been better to have a more contrasting color for the text. At the very bottom in the border is the de- signers information and logo, I checked them out and they do have many success- ful advertisements in many mediums, but this one seems to fall short compared to most they do.