Adam Atkinson

200179202

The need for a standard font size interval system on the World Wide Web

“This dissertation is submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Arts in Graphic Communication Design”

The School of Design, University of Leeds, 19/03/2009

The Need for a standard font size interval system on the World Wide Web.

Introduction to the study

This dissertation is a report on Communication and media in the world, specifically with regards to the Internet, how and why we communicate through it, leading on to the problems faced when doing so, finally looking at resolving those problems through various deployed and recommended methods. The first chapter of this dissertation presents the background of the study, specifies the problem of the study, describes its significance, and presents an overview of the methodology used.

Background of the study

The Influence for the study was based on the current, continuing growth and importance of the Internet when used as a form of media to communicate. Within this researchers field of graphic communication design, people are always looking for new ways and opportunities to communicate through a medium, originally, interactively and excitingly. It is to this researchers belief that theses opportunities now present themselves quite firmly in the form of the Internet. With technologies still advancing and new developments constantly being introduced with regards to the web, it is claimed that we are only at the beginning, with the future seeming long and prosperous for the new media age of the Internet.  Font size modulation is a fundamental issue when communicating on the Internet, it is how the user will gain the required message you wish to communicate, issues such as accessibility, legibility and clarity are the most important factors of text communication on the World Wide Web, but with the constant varying, numerous methods and problems of achieving such, it has always been a major challenge for web designers, with the vast majority often accepting the aesthetic flaws. In high-resolution print, typography designers have vast freedom over the control of the typographic range and values, in low screen resolution designers don’t. Many problems exist when trying to display type aesthetically, for low screen resolutions one problem being the variable designs of the font themselves for which however, there are alternatives. This study focuses upon the need for a standard font size interval system on the World Wide Web.
The problem statement

This study is not set out to achieve the perfect HTML coding for text legibility and accuracy on every single browser upon every different platform across the Internet, but more so to argue the uses of the Internet compared to other forms of media present and future, along with discussing and testing current theories in relation to communicating on the Internet with text to provide a basis for further development into achieving a standard font size interval system.

The professional significance of the study

This study is such that any meaningful results would seem to be of value to practitioners. With so many methods and claims of ‘this is the correct code to use’ it is hard to deliberate which one is most beneficial when trying to achieve accurate text legibility and aesthetics on the Internet, if any. Or should a new method be found, it provides the basis for further investigation and implementation by other individuals. It also highlights the main uses in media to communicate to the world and discusses them against each other whilst constantly comparing to the Internet as a form of communication media.

An overview of the methodology

A general overview of the methodology includes an empirical study using trial and error to test the current techniques of styling text-using CSS for achieving accurate and consistent text legibility across the Internet. A more detailed review can be found in the methodology chapter.

The delimitations of the study

The testing of the study will be carried out using CSS (cascading style sheets) and a standard HTML (Hypertext markup language) webpage as required by the W3C standards. Only the basic use of text sizing inside the ‘body’ and ‘div’ elements with a standard reading of left to right will be examined, thus the boundaries of this study will not examine methods of text sizing in lists unordered or ordered, tables, php, XHTML or any other attribute or form of code, this is due to time constraints.