Legal Writing

Type & Image ? Part IV

Yesterday — in our search for a way to set very legible type on a real image — we went from this:

To this:

We did much to improve legibility, but we had to use more space.

Now the question is this: can we set the type so it’s legible and compact? That’s our goal.

So far, we’ve viewed our green type against a medium blue and light beige background. How would it look against a medium green background?

Another way of asking that question is this: what if there were hardly any contrast at all between the type and the current background?

Then we’d have this:

That doesn’t work at all.

We can change the color of the type so it has a strong contrast with a known image, but — since we don’t know what the image might be — we know can’t find a color that works with all images. Whatever color we pick could be a big part of the image.

Let’s see if we can make the type legible without changing its color.

Let’s add a drop shadow, like so:

That drop shadow goes a long way toward solving the problem of very low contrast between image and type.

Is there another effect we could use that yields better results?

Yes. Consider what happens when we add an outer-glow effect:

Very legible, right?

Now, let’s see if we can maintain legibility while putting more characters into a smaller space.

Here’s what happens when we make the type less bold:

Note that the type uses less space when we make it less bold.

Here’s what happens when we condense the type:

And here’s what happens when reduce the size of the type:

Not bad. Now we’ve got type that doesn’t consume too much space, but has good legibility.

That’s certainly more legible than the image that started this discussion:

That’s it for now. Tune in next time for more on how to set type on image.

Full post as published by Set in Style on March 11, 2010 (boomark / email).