Epic fonts and epic battles...sort of

     In this round of design and layout attempts, I chose exercises that looked at font selections of epic proportions in addition to two websites with a battle that is just as epic, if not even more so. (I'm not sure why, but I am enjoying the word epic today...) Again, I will be looking at elements discussed in Golombisky & Hagen's (2010) text White Space Is Not Your Enemy:  A beginner's guide to communicating visually through graphic, web & multimedia design and Krause's (2004) Design Basics Index:  A graphic designer's guide to designing effective compositions. 

1.  Word portraits Exercise - Krause, 2004, p. 241
     As if the ultimate example of personification, Krause discusses fonts' ability to have a voice, but different voices according to their family, size, spacing, and so on. In this exercise, I had to look through a dozen different fonts available in my computer's collection, generate two words that describes the voice or message it conveys, and one word that is contradictory to its voice. To complete this exercise, I underlined the name of the font, followed by two words associated with the appearance of the font and the third word being the contrast. I had a hard time choosing just one word answers to describe twelve different fonts without sounding repetitive; I used some phrases that just happened to come to mind when thinking about how to describe or how to contradict the voices of these fonts.
     I knew I wanted to do screen shots of what I did in my Word document, so I chose to select 24 point size for the font, and they are organized in two columns on each page.

     As mentioned by Krause (2004), fonts sharing the same point size does not mean they share the same spacing or the same height.  My choice of fonts was completely random, to be honest. I clicked on that drop down menu and scrolled down to find some interesting ones; some I use regularly, some I may have used a few times before, and others that I rarely or never used at all but have thought of using them.  In the back of my mind, I must have had a reason to choose the fonts that I did.  I presume that I did want to take a closer look at fonts that have held my attention before.  It is hard to put into words what their appearance is, and thus, why I would want to use them.

2.  What is a Grid? activity #1 - Golombisky & Hagen, 2010, p. 67
     Here, we are asked to look at two websites who are competing with their content and compare the organization of those pages.  I figured that one of the biggest technology battles is Apple vs. Microsoft.  I will have to provide the links to these websites for you to visit, as it is hard for me to take a screen picture of the entire home page; both home pages require scrolling down to see all of the initial content.

Apple
     It is quite apparent that Apple is known for using the white to black color gradient to convey their clean and streamlined appearance (mostly focusing on white and light grays).  Once you visit the home page, you are hit with a lot of white negative space, allowing the most current product to pop.  Smart thinking, Apple, using the visual within your product to create the focal point, when the new innovation of said product is its retina display.  So, when you visit the home page, bam, your eyes are slapped with the large image of their new MacBook Pro.  The beautiful image of the zebras, not coming from the Apple website, but from the display in the image of the newest product pop in a lightly boxed in area of white space. It's as if Apple's website is the poster child of this textbook.
     As you scroll down, you see four other featured products from Apple, not taking up as much space as the MacBook Pro, but three of them still given the same treatment:  framed white space with the color coming from the image in the middle and neutral colored, centered text.  The fourth box is entirely made up of color, but considering that it is advertising back to school preparedness, it could be alluding to the playfulness and excitement that is often associated with that time of year.
     Aside from the menu at the top, I would have to say that the boxed in images of the products on Apple's home page would probably be a 4x4 or a 4x5 grid. I can't tell if the MacBook Pro's image is 4 or 5 times the height of the images featured on the bottom.  Though there are alleys between the boxes of the products, there is still a unified overall look, as if they all make up one large square.

Microsoft
      The first thing I noticed about Microsoft's home page is that it definitely incorporates more color than Apple. Perhaps this is to convey a more casual and easy feel for Microsoft products.  Like Apple, it has a large block dedicated to a new product; however this block is a slideshow of a few of their new items. The slide show loops through three images, two of which are photos of people using their products, perhaps to show ease of use. 
     Microsoft also has two neutral colored boxes on the right for the navigator to choose if they are looking to use Microsoft for personal use or office use, in addition to featured products on the bottom of the large image block in distinguished boxes.  These boxes are also filled with color to advertise programs that are hosted by Microsoft.  Altogether, I would say that the live space of the boxes would be 6x4.  Since the two gray boxes on the right seem to just "hang" off from the main block of media, all of the boxes do not appear to create one uniform unit as described for Apple's home page.
     Further below the bottom three boxes, there are other menus organized in a mix of columns and more image boxes.  These appear to break the grid, as one set of columns is three, and the last set of columns on the very bottom of the page is of four.  These columns also follow the clothesline model of gridwork, and the bottom edges are not evened out.

     I am a little disappointed in how much I still don't understand about layouts and grids.  I do understand the purpose of them, and their uses, but I feel like with the level of nit-picking in my being, I should understand more of the gritty details on how to come up with proportions and whatnot when it comes to drafting a grid and continuing your layout from there. Perhaps that would come with personal experience in trying to create a grid for a working space myself rather than trying to estimate the grid dimensions off of a website.