About

Designer In The Loop

Designer in the loop approaches let the designer evaluate the overall context, considering all involved aspects. After the decision is made, the designer provides her input, and let the model do its work and generate the entire type system. We can say that the designer is providing a hint to the model. The hint is actually a base value, which can be a font size, line height or letter spacing.

Existing Models

In terms of models, the font size space is the best covered nowadays. The existing models are simple and easy to understand, but still have the right complexity level to be precise. They are using the designer in the loop approach, since the designer is providing the base font size. Therefore the existing models fits our need.

Regarding the line heights, there is a kind of polarization in terms of models. On one side we have overly complex models, which in my opinion fails, because of two reasons. First, they are making a lot of assumptions, trying to fully automate the process, but unfortunately for them, the world is much more complex. Secondly, being complex makes them difficult to understand, and therefore the chance of being adopted is low. On the other side we have oversimplified models, which lacks accuracy. Therefore there is a place for improvement here, considering a designer in the loop approach.

Letter spacing looks like an underdeveloped area in terms of models availability nowadays. There are some proprietary models, and some font specific ones, but both are almost unknown in the design community. It looks that we have another area where the things can be improved, using the same designer in the loop approach.

Available Tools

In term of tools we have some initiatives nowadays, but they are not covering all the aspects implied by setting a type system in a complete way. Some of them are covering the font size aspect, fewer offers support for the line height, but none of them is approaching the letter spacing. And of course there is a need for a tool which provides everything in one place. A tool which keeps the designer in control with a designer in a loop approach.

This Project

The purpose of this project is to provide models for the areas which are not yet covered with optimal designer in the loop solutions. The proposed models are precise yet simple enough to be easily adopted. Another project purpose is to provide a one stop tool for any designer in charge of a type system design.

The line height and letter spacing models are brand new, and are based on the author's individual research and experience. These two models have some similarities and are inspired from the pendulum motion. If you are interested into them, you can find more in the models section.

The Author

Adonis Raul Raduca is a well-rounded UX designer with more than 15 years of experience. Along his career path he solved complex UX design problems in various business fields. He has a computer science degree, and prior becoming a UX designer he was a professional software engineer.