Vignelli, oh Vignelli

I really liked how mathematical many of the design principles of The Vignelli Canon were, probably because I am a math major. First off, I love that the International paper sizes stem from the golden rectangle. It makes me very frustrated that this is not how American paper sizes are standardized because it would make our lives so much easier! But whatever America be weird with your 8 1/2 x 11 paper.

I liked what The Vignelli Canon stated about proportions of what you are designing, particularly with the different grids for spacing and the size of the font. I personally have just gone with whatever I felt looked good when designing flyers and pages, but using math seems much more logical to me. I like the idea of larger fonts being twice as big as the smaller fonts because it looks more balanced and also the idea that font should be one less than the size of the column. Putting these design concepts into a mathematical form is something I prefer to my old habits. I know that in general humans prefer for objects to be well proportioned so it makes sense to use math when designing layouts.

The other section regarding the kinds of fonts to use I am not so sure I agree with, but this may be one of those outdated points. I think that it is sometimes necessary to use some of the more fun types of fonts. In a professional setting, I agree that you should stick with those basic few listed, but I don’t know if I will give up using some of the more fun fonts when designing layouts in my spare time.

Vignelli made many good points overall. I think some of the graphics were a bit outdated and I wish there were some more modern examples, but I understand the point that Vignelli was getting at on many of the concepts.