C HAPTE R 2

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• Human development that began about 6,000 years ago.
• The first meaningful marks were scraped onto mud tablets and left to harden in the
sun.
• Only members of the ruling classes and the priesthood were allowed to read and
write the pictographic signs and cuneiforms.
• The earliest messages delivered in written words typically contained information
vital to the management of people, politics, and taxes.
 The Power of Meaning

• Single word may be masked in many meanings.

– Nails
– Mine
– Break etc...

• It is important to develop accuracy and conciseness in

the specific words you choose.
• In multimedia, these are the words that will appear in
your:
– titles
– menus
– navigation aids
– narrative/story or content.
• It’s important to design labels for:
– title screens,
– menus
– buttons or tabs
• Its required to use words that have the most precise and powerful
meanings to express what you need to say.
– GO BACK! is more powerful than Previous
– TERRIFIC! may work better than That Answer Was Correct.
 About Fonts and Faces

• Typeface
• Font size
• Font style
• Kerning: is the spacing between character pairs
• Cases: upper and lower
• Case sensitive: meaning that the text’s upper and
lowercase letters must match exactly to be recognized.
 Serif vs. Sans Serif

• Serif versus sans serif is the simplest way to categorize a typeface.

• Sans is French for “without”.
• The serif is the little decoration at the end of a letter stroke.
– Times, New Century Schoolbook, Bookman, and Palatino are
examples of serif fonts.
– Helvetica, Verdana, Arial, Optima, and AvantGrade are sans
serif.
 Using Text in Multimedia
• Imagine designing a project that used no text at all.
• You would need to use many pictures and symbols to train your audience how to
navigate through the project.
• Certainly voice and sound could guide the audience, but users would quickly tire of
this:
– Greater effort is required to pay attention to spoken words than to browse text
with the eye.