Quiet Structure for a Gentlemen's Game

Feeding on my inner geekdom, I chose PGATour.com as my example of quiet structure. The site did a very nice job this weekend of covering one of my favorite events, the WGC Match Play Championship in Arizona.

The site is very easy on the eyes and its compact structure is easy to navigate. It follows a standard blueprint of most national sports-based websites with clean lines, primary colors and simple fonts. A crazy design concept would not work on this site. Golf caters to a specific demographic and the simpler its design, the better its functionality.

A bold look at Freshman

In my job as the Media Relations Assistant here at Dixie State College, one task I am asked to do is update media notes for our games. The document template used in the department adopted a font this year that closely resembled the block lettering of the official Dixie State Athletics logo. That font is Freshman.

The font is unique in the fact that it has uniquely modern features, sprinkled with one old tinge. Freshman font is a capital letter font, meaning that letters meant to be lowercase in fonts like Ariel or Times New Roman would remain capitalized in the Freshman font. Readers can tell the difference because letters deemed lowercase are shorter in height than the true uppercase.

Another modern aspect is the consistency of bold lines that make up the lettering. Unlike an old style or transitional font, Freshman has thick lines. The best example in this case is the letter Q. You can barely see the descending bar distinguishing the Q from an O because of its thickness. There is no delineation in line thickness in the Freshman font.

As modern as the font may look, it does present an older look with the use of serifs. Thick bars on both the top and bottom of the letter X highlight the serifs.

It is my opinion that the font was created for bold headings and those who cannot see words clearly. Its striking nature makes it a favorable font for advertisers. The National Football League has used the font in ads in past.

For use in the Dixie State media notes, we indent the font in section headings. This makes the font look asymmetrical despite its rigid regular symmetry. Below is a picture of the front page of our men’s basketball notes. Freshman font examples are the words “Men’s Basketball” at the top of the page, each section header in white lettering bordered by red, and the footer (found on every page of the notes).

Logo Branding in Design

DSC Athletics current logo

Dixie State Athletics has evolved over the past six years, from a powerhouse junior college program that claimed multiple national championships to a group now maturing and making waves at the NCAA Division-II level.

A step in the process was a change in logos. The department and school felt it necessary to update the traditional DSC logo the campus used in the past to a sleeker design that would encapsulate a new focus and drive.

Original logo designed for the Red Storm

Upon the school's decision to drop the name "Rebels" and rename the sports teams as the "Red Storm", a logo was created by art and design students to fit the momentous occasion. The logo featured a red cyclonic bull figure with blue eyes and horns. Underneath, the Red Storm font look more calligraphy-based compared the the school's name in block text.

In my opinion, this logo set the department back. It did not meet the need of the growing program. Contextually and in contrast, the logo met basic needs. It displayed the new team name, highlighted the color scheme of the school and temporally (at least tried to) depict a literal picture of what the Red Storm would bring.

The logo has too much in a small area. It violates the Law of Simplicity due to the sheer nature of pictorial volume.

The new logo (pictured above) is much sleeker, easier on the eye and contextually is cleaner. It highlights the three major colors used by the school. No matter the size of the logo, you can easily distinguish the "D". Its simplicity allows for other designers to easily implement it into other items, like posters, apparel and websites.

<<Below are examples of the "D" logo used in other types of designs>>

Contrast, Balance, Harmony by the Bay

John Potter

This picture was taken in January 2011 while the Dixie State men’s and women’s basketball teams enjoyed a ferry shuttle tour of the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz Island in the San Francisco Bay. I took this picture, using former DSC basketball player John Berger as my unsuspecting muse.

Contextually, the picture takes you to only a few places in which a shot like this can actually happen. Those options include a boat, which is precisely where this shot was taken, or a island/peninsula close enough to the bridge. The shot from behind the human subject shows that I was closer to him taking the picture than we were in relative distance to the bridge. You also get a sense that the bridge may not be as large as it is, but the size contrast is skewed because of my placement to the subject and the bridge (We were about half a mile away at this point).

This shot was taken in the morning with the sun directly behind us. The sun’s rays brighten the colors of the sky, the bridge and the subject’s beanie. If this shot were taken in the afternoon, the light would cast shadows and produce a very different picture temporally. Also, there is a cultural context here because the bridge symbolizes hope and new opportunities for many (like the Statue of Liberty does for our friends on the east coast).

Relative to balance, you get a very symmetrical look with the bridge construction and its straight vertical lines, but an asymmetrical look with the subject being flushed to the right. The bridge in the middle of the picture and the subject to the right fill two-thirds of the frame, leaving the far left open.

I believe the colors of the sky and the beanie mesh harmoniously. Add the greys of the low clouds on the horizon and on the hooded sweatshirt adds a second color blend. The lack of clashing colors or textures lends a very peaceful tone to the harmony of this picture and warmth of the situation. Textures of the beanie cap and the hoodie accentuate the warmth element in the harmony of this picture.

It is a subjective thought, but I did not think much of this picture until very recently. The more I look at it, the more nuance I see despite a lot open space with sky and water. I see a slight tilting of the subject’s head – maybe he is in awe of the approaching bridge or maybe he was just knocked around by the swells in the water.