8 entries for "David Kadavy: Design for Hackers"

[A block of text creates a certain texture based on the thickness and evenness of letter stroke, the serifs.]

[A font's point size is based on the difference between the tallest ascender (like the tip of a 'b') and the lowest descender (like the tail of a 'p').]

[Body copy tends to look better with a leading / line-height of 120% to 140% of a type's size (1.2em to 1.4em).]

[Similar character widths make for better pairings.]

[Typefaces are built for specific mediums such as print or screen.]

[If you seperate paragraphs with space, a full line break is usually too much, better to have 0.8em.]

[Within Serif fonts: Old style, like Garamond, has a tilted axis, round serifs, modulated strokes; Traditional, like Baskerville, has an upright axis, sharp serifs, heavily modulated strokes, geometrical shapes; Modern, like Bodoni, has an upright axis, thin serifs, extremely modulated strokes, geometric counters; Slab-serif, like Museo Slab, has an upright axis, even thick modulation that matches the size of serifs.]

[Short cones are absent from the fovea, which is the center of our focus and where we can best see detail.]

[Researchers found that exposure to red overloads the brain's rationalizing capacity without you realizing. Participants displayed hesitation and earned lower IQ test scores, but rates their performance the same as the control.]

[Shopping in a Target store involves being assaulted with red in every direction, and there is a joke that you cannot leave without spending $100.]

[When surveying color usage and significance in a particular culture, research the flag, religions, weddings and funerals, holidays, sports.]

[Pointillism exploits our perception of two different colored dots placed next to one another to create the effect of a different overall color.]

[Warm hues and tints pop and appear to be closer. Cool hues and shades recede and appear to be farther away.]

[Tinted purple on black pops in a more jarring way than on blue because there is a relationship between the colors in the former pair.]

[Monochromatic schemes use a single base color with various tints and shades, and tend to be quiet.]

[Analogous schemes use adjacent or alternating adjacent hues, and tend to be harmonious and quiet.]

[Complementary schemes use opposing hues on the wheel and can be more exciting.]

[Split complementary schemes divide one opposing hue into its two adjacent colors, and can be less jarring or more harmonious than complementary schemes.]

[Triadic schemes use three evenly spaced hues.]

[Colour as we perceive it is a form of electromagnetic radiation between 400-790 teraherts. It's lower than infrared, microwaves, and radio; higher than x-rays and ultraviolet.]

[We don't see pure colours. They are spectrums that our visual system approximates, which results in our experiencing of the dominant color.]

[Colour constancy refers to the phenomenon of perceiving various shades of a colour as the same, despite there being subtle differences between them.]

[Human eyes have millions of photoreceptors called cones that can be divided into three sizes and each is more sensitive to a certain spectra: short (blue/violet), medium (green), and large (red/yellow-green))

[Ganglion cells antagonistically combine signals from the cones, which makes red compete with green, and blue compete with yellow.]

[There is no purple as pure and dominant. Ganglion cells perceive red and blue simultaneously.]

[Women rarely have colour blindness because they have two X chromosomes, which is where the genes for cones are located.]

[A dog may have a hard time finding a red ball in green grass because they are naturally are dichromatic, which means that one of the three cone types is nor present. This is common in mammals other than humans.]

[Some hues have wider perceptible ranges of saturation and lightness: the color space is not uniform.]

[Using a Lab color picker can result in more uniform lightness than HSB.]

[In the additive RGB color system used by screens: red and green combine to make yellow, red and blue to make magenta, and blue and green to make cyan.]

[Whereas RGB is an additive process the mixes towards white, CMYK starts with white and subtracts by reflecting light through pigments.)

[Color management between color profiles relies on Lab representation to produce colors that are ultimately not identical but metamerically the same.]

[If a shape is repeated enough times at a small enough scale, it becomes texture.]

[Use direction and organize elements into explicit and implicit lines to guide the eye from one section to the other.]

[Use contrast not only to differentiate elements: frame and give focus to light elements by surrounding them with darkness.]

[Painters design a course for the eye to move through using lines that are implied in the visual content.]

[Distinctions between foreground and background can go beyond spatial position and include things like color, level of detail, whitespace.]

[Think Vitamin uses visual prominence to create a hierarchy for your eye to move through, starting with the title/logo, followed by navigation, then the most recent post, followed by other posts.]

[Bleeding off the edge makes something appear larger and thus more in the foreground.]

[The most dominant element is like a magnet but also like an anchor that the eye repeatedly returns to while exploring other parts of the composition.]

[By creating geometric relationships between canvas and content, you help keep the viewers eye on the composition.]

[It took Gutenberg 16 years to perfect the technology for creating printed books.]

[When selecting a typeface, consider its origin and intentions as well as how the mediums influenced its forms.]