Inbetween: Visual Selection in Parametric Design

TL;DR

This paper introduces a visual selection catalog for parametric design, enabling continuous font selection and revealing personal style patterns through a user study with graphic designers.

Contribution

It provides guidelines for creating minimal-bias visual selection catalogs and demonstrates their application in a parametric typeface, formalizing style selection as decision tree traversals.

Findings

Selection patterns are self-coherent among users.

High correlation of selection patterns within tasks.

Patterns reflect personal style in design choices.

Abstract

The act of selection plays a leading role in the design process and in the definition of personal style. This work introduces visual selection catalogs into parametric design environments. A two-fold contribution is presented: (i) guidelines for construction of a minimal-bias visual selection catalog from a parametric space, and (ii) Inbetween, a catalog for a parametric typeface that adheres to the guidelines, allows for font selection from a continuous design space, and enables the investigation of personal style. A user study conducted among graphic designers, revealed self-coherent characteristics in selection patterns, and a high correlation in selection patterns within tasks. These findings suggest that such patterns reflect personal user styles, formalizing the style selection process as traversals of decision trees. Together, our guidelines and catalog aid in making visual selection a key building block in the digital creation process and validate selection processes as a measure of personal style.