To: Dr.

Hurley
From: Jamie Koch
Date: March 5, 2014
Subject: Justification for Choices made in Module 4

The purpose of this memo is to discuss the rationale and justification for my choices in Module 4.
I will discuss a rationale for my chosen song; features of my design, including font, color, and
layout; how the design complements the meaning of my song; and the intended effect that my
design will have on viewers.

Song Choice

I chose the song Harvest Moon by Neil Young to design in this module. While I like a great
number of songs, this song in particular really speaks to me. It makes me feel happy and sad at the
same time, and when this module was assigned, I immediately knew that I wanted to work with
Harvest Moon. My interpretation of the song, a large harvest moon in the night sky, revolves
around its name, which, when visualized, invokes a lot of feeling.

Design Features

I chose a font that was easy to read, but still flowed. Flow was important to me in this design
because all of the lyrics go in a circle. Didot, a serif typeface, met this qualification and more. I
liked that it was slightly more bubbly and rounded than other serif faces I looked at. The song is
about a love that seems somewhat unsure, do the font works well to communicate the love aspect,
while not being overly lovey-dovey. It doesnt look staunch, but it also does not seem too playful.
I think that the song also conveys a feeling thats somewhere in the middle, so I thought the font
was perfect.

To highlight some words, I used a script called Impregnable. I chose it for its legibility and thick
stroke lines. Legibility, according to Williams, refers to whether a short burst of textis easily
recognizable (43). Because I only used it for short spans of text, readability was not as important
to be as it was when I chose Didot. I used Impregnable on words that are very common and easily
recognizable in almost any typeface. I also chose to italicize Didot to give certain words or short
phrases emphasis. The words I chose to emphasize have meaning in the song, and were not
chosen arbitrarily. Another way I chose to create emphasis was by adjusting kerning and font size.
Specifically, I tightened up the space between the letters in closer and brought up the size a few
points. This makes the word stand out to the reader by making the word closer appear as
physically closer to ones eye.

I chose to have the text flow in circle formation, in several rings to resemble a moon, which
complements the meaning of the song. This not only helps to form an image with the words, but
also forces the reader to pay attention to what he or she is reading. Although the song has a chorus,
it is not as repetitive as some songs. Forcing the reader to pay attention helps alert them to the fact
that it is not just the same words listed over and over.

I chose to mimic the colors of a harvest moon in the night sky. All of the pictures and paintings I
found in my research show a harvest moon as being big, round, and orange. The color orange can
also remind the viewer of the harvest and fall, for which the moon is named. Rather than having
only one shade of orange, I opted for a gradient effect, and faded the orange into a gold color.
This gives the moon more dimension and also signifies movement in the text. I also used color to
highlight certain words for emphasis.

For the background, I chose a deep navy blue, which resembles the sky on a night with a very
bright moon. In addition to looking like the sky, orange and blue are also complementary colors
on the color wheel, so they complement each other in this design (Lupton and Phillips 73). I
placed the chorus in the background in Didot to mirror the text of the moon. I set this
background text in a more transparent shade of the navy blue to mimic stars in the sky. I tracked
out the letters to give them the appearance of stars, and I also faded them so they would be
brighter the farther away from the moon they were. According to Lupton and Phillips,
Transparencycan serve to build complexity by allowing layers to mix and merge together (147).
This is what I hoped to achieve in my piece. The differing levels of transparency have the effect of
making the stars appear more realistic, as well as highlighting the titular line of the song (harvest
moon) at the bottom of the page. The stars also make the moon look much more like a moon
than it would if it was standing alone on a blank page. The elements of the design work together to
inform the viewer how the piece should be viewed.

Designs Effect on Viewers

This design might have a number of different effects on readers, but my intention is that is helps
extend and deepen the meaning of the song by allowing them to visualize it. My design calls to
mind a somewhat literal interpretation of Harvest Moon, but extends the meaning by
highlighting and drawing attention to key words and phrases. As previously stated, the design
elements work together to create a picture of the night sky, and I think that viewers will be
interested by the visual that is created by the lyrics. By viewing my design, the reader or viewer will
be able to discern what is really important about the song just by looking at it. The emphasized
words call out to the reader, giving them an idea of what the song might be about. The image that
the words create might bring up other feelings for viewers, as the harvest moon only happens once
a year, and any full moon is a beautiful and amazing sight to behold. My design plays on these
feelings of awe that are already associated with the full moon, or more specifically the harvest
moon.