Excercise 3 -by Shona, Joanne, Kay and Karan

Highlighting – a useful technique to bring attention to a specific area or image.
Highlighting can be a very effective technique when utilized properly, but there are certain guidelines that one should follow when highlighting:

• Never highlight more than 10% of the visible design
• Bold is minimal noise and clearly highlights
• Italics adds minimal noise but is less detectable and legible
• Underlining adds considerable noise and compromises legibility
• Avoid using different typefaces to highlight, instead try using Caps
• Colour is very effective, but should be used with another highlighting technique.
• Colours should be very distinctive from one another.
• Inversing elements add considerable noise but work well with words.
• Blinking should be used to highlight critical information (ex. Emergency status lights) and should be able to turn on and off.

And so here's a gamble for a bonus mark. I think Jesse's excercise 3 image is using "colour" and "typeface" (all capitals) as a highlighting technique. Um. I think.

Layering
Organizing information into related groupings to manage complexity and reinforce relations in the information. There are two kinds of layering: two-dimensional and three-dimensional. Two-dimensional layering only allows one layer of information to be available at a time, while three-dimensional layering allows multiple layers of information to be available at one time.

For example: Photoshop is a program that allows you to use three-dimensional layering because it allows multiple layers of information to be viewed at one time.

Alignment:Ordering elements by forming rows and/or columns in order to create unity and coherence. e.g. the arrangement of data in a grid or table

Signal-to-Noise Ratio:
In design, "signal" refers to the focus, point or message of the design. "Noise" refers to unnecessary, distracting visual elements that confuse or interfere with the point of the design. A design with a HIGH Signal-to-Noise Ratio then, will be one that conveys its message easily to the viewer. A design with a LOW Signal-to-Noise ratio, will have unneccesary visual elements that make the information in the design harder to comprehend. This term seems to be used mostly when referring to charts, and other quantitative data. The design below shows a chart with a low Signal-to-Noise ratio.