Design Matters and Type Choices

Hello everyone! Welcome to my blog, the Sunny Side of Life.  I decided to name my blog after song lyrics from one of my favorite songs, "Look for the Silver Lining," which is also featured in my Tagxedo. For the past eleven years, I have been teaching 6th grade English at Short Pump Middle School in Henrico County.  While I love my job and my students, my passions are changing.  My favorite part of the day is reading picture books to my two year old daughter at bed time. I am very interested in becoming an elementary school librarian. I am a natural optimist who loves old movies, picture books, sewing,and graphic design.

Design Matters
For my blog, I tried to create a sense of balance. I created a dark wooden background that would contrast with the light background where my text is placed. I love to decorate, and my designer eye is always drawn to light text on dark backgrounds; however, I recognize how hard that can be on a user's eyes when reading lengthy text, so, I am practicing restraint and keeping my focus on communication rather than decoration. In my blog's banner, I wanted to create a visual representation of my personality so visitors would get a sense of who I am in one, short glance. I selected a sunflower field as my background to represent optimism and used a public domain photo of Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz to symbolize my love of classic children's literature. I added the blue banner behind my text so my title would be easier to read.  All three of these elements feature the same color blue (#65b0f2), which I also included in my Tagxedo as well.

Type Choices
My web banner features two different styles of text from two different families.  For my title, I wanted to grab readers' attention, so I used a larger font called Phosphate Inline.  My title features all capital letters, but this will be the only place I use all caps on my blog. I also spaced the letters out a little more on my blog so it would be easier to read.  The second group uses the font BrushScriptSTD, which is a script font. This line is not as important as the title, and I used the script font for decorative purposes only.  The font is small so as not to pull attention away from the title.  The primary text of my blog is Trebuchet, a sans-serif font, which our text book recommended for computer screens.