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| Credit: nasa.gov |
Alignment is lining items up with a specific side or centered such as left or right, or the middle. This is connected to writing and blog posts because paragraphs are more readable and aesthetically pleasing when they are aligned to one side instead of centered. This can be seen in online posts and articles in abundance. For example: NASA’s homepage has a section on updates from Hurricane Dorian. In this example, the text is aligned to the left, with the text box aligned perfectly with a picture of the hurricane. I’ve tried to use this design principle in my blog by aligning the text with the left side margin of the window in which blog posts appear.
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| Credit: nasa.gov |
Color is the use of colors to attract and amplify the experience of the viewer. This principle can be connected to blog posts and writing by having a complementary color palette on a blog or website. We can see this principle at work with the example below, also from NASA’s home page. This is a link to an article about naming NASA’s next Mars Rover, accompanied by a text box with hyperlinks to NASA events. The colors used in the graphic for the Mars rover is predominantly analogous, and the text box is one of the colors of this analogous combination and seems to mesh seamlessly next to each other. I have used this principle in my blog by selecting a background with analogous colors and font colors to match.
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| Credit: nasa.gov |
Highlighting is the use of bold, italics, underline, typeface, coloring, inversing, and blinking to emphasize specific text or images. This is connected to blog posts and writing because it can be used to bring attention to specific sentences, words, or images that the writer deems more significant than others in a piece. This principle can be seen at work in the below example of the end of an article from NASA. This has both bold and italic at use and has clickable hyperlinks in a different color to show both important information and information that is clickable to more information. This is put to use on my blog, specifically in this assignment – bolding the name of the principles in the first line, as well as different colors for links versus regular text.
Legibility is when text is clearly readable based on the color, font, font size, background, among many other aspects. This is connected to writing and blog posts because without the reader being able to read the text, they will not be able to read what the writer is trying to say. An example of this principle at work is NASA’s navigation bar at the top of the webpage. It features a clean, legible font, and contrast with white font on a black background. I have tried to implement this principle by keeping the text margins a plain, dark font, on a white background.
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| Credit: nasa.gov |
Readability is the amount that a text can be understood by the intended audience based on the vocabulary used and ways the sentences are arranged. This principle is connected to blog posts and writing because the writer must make sure the reader is able to read and understand the message they are trying to get across. The writer must keep the intended audience in mind when writing. An example of this principle at work is below. NASA is full of intelligent minds that speak and write with words that are not part of the common vocabulary to the average everyday person. The team in charge of writing or revising these articles must make sure that the average person can understand the message they are trying to convey. I have tried to implement this principle in my blog by using words from our assigned reading and keeping in mind the audience is my college-level classmates and not a fourth-grade class.
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| Credit: nasa.gov |
