[thelist] designed challenged

[Michael Barrett]

The problem with any answer to that question is that it falls under the
realm of aesthetics, which may foster endless debate.

But a *functional* reason small text looks better than large text
(sometimes ;-) )

It's not that the text is *small*, but small relative to the entire
page/screen/window.
Smaller text leaves more space between blocks of text. The white space
visually balances out area occupied by the text. It's a balancing act.

Dark colors (like the black of text) or complex shapes (like letters) carry
more visual 'weight', that is they draw more attention from your eye, and
take more work for your brain to decipher. Too much of this makes a page
look/feel heavy, clumsy, or cluttered.

A lot of white space, or negative space, is required to balance a little bit
of dark color or complex shapes.

When you have the right amount of both dark space and white space, the
page/screen looks/feels balanced and harmonious.

Larger text, although easier to read, takes up a lot more room on the
page/screen, so it's harder to find enough white space to balance it out.
Pages end up looking chunky.

If you think graphic images that have really large text (posters, newspaper
headlines, etc) you'll notice that there's usually not much else on the
page.


> OK, so why is it that small text just looks so much cooler than large text,
> even though it's often less usable?
> Being design-challenged, I just don't get that. But it's true. But I don't
> get it. Help?

-- Michael Barrett
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mbarrett at triad.rr.com
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