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Lesson plan Grade 11 Art & Music

Millbrook Boil-Water Notice: Typographic Hierarchy

Grade 11 students set a boil-water notice for a fictional water district, sizing headline and body type and testing the column measure against the page.

Objectives

  1. Students will convert type sizes between points and inches within a fixed page layout.
  2. Students will calculate a column measure in characters and judge it against a stated legibility range.
  3. Students will rank the parts of an emergency notice into three levels of typographic hierarchy and defend the ranking.

Vocabulary

Key words: hierarchy, leading, measure, cap height, point, pica

Teacher overview

When a water system loses pressure or fails a bacteriological sample, the utility has to put a boil-water notice in front of customers quickly, and the notice has to be readable by someone standing at a door in poor light. This lesson treats that notice as a typographic problem: three levels of hierarchy, a fixed sheet size, a body size that has to hold a stated number of lines, and a column measure that has to stay inside a comfortable reading range. The teaching note that matters most is procedural. Have every student draw the live area on tracing paper before they calculate anything, because students who calculate first tend to size the headline for drama and then discover that the required instructions no longer fit. The misconception worth naming early is that a larger headline always improves an urgent message, when in practice an oversized headline crowds the instruction that tells the reader what to do into the space left over.

Procedure

Hook (6 min): Post two versions of the same short notice, one where the utility name is the largest element and one where the instruction "Boil water before drinking" is the largest element. Ask students which version a person reads correctly while walking past, and record the split on the board without commenting on it.

Direct instruction (14 min): Define point, pica, leading, measure, and cap height, and establish the two constants the class will use all period: 72 points to the inch and 12 points to the pica. Model one conversion on the board with numbers that are not on the handout, such as a 36 point headline measuring half an inch. Then show the three-level hierarchy the class will use: the instruction, the reason and duration, and the contact block.

Guided practice (12 min): Working in pairs, students mark the live area of the sheet on tracing paper and complete handout items 1 and 2 aloud. Confirm both answers with the whole class before anyone continues, since every later item depends on the column width.

Independent practice (20 min): Students finish handout items 3 through 11 and sketch a thumbnail of the notice at one quarter size, labeling each of the three hierarchy levels with the type size they assigned it.

Closure and exit ticket (8 min): Each student writes one sentence on an index card naming the element they placed at the top of the hierarchy and the reason. Sort the cards into two piles, those that name the instruction and those that name the utility name or logo, and use the count to decide whether the following period opens with a reteach on hierarchy or moves to revision.

Millbrook Boil-Water Notice: Typographic Hierarchy — Grade 11 Art & Music
Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Student Handout

The fictional Millbrook Water District has issued a boil-water notice. It prints on one sheet 8.5 inches wide and 11 inches tall. The live area, meaning the space inside the margins, is 7.5 inches wide and 9.5 inches tall. Use 72 points to the inch throughout.

The district's print office uses three studio rules. The average character in this typeface is half as wide as the type size. A comfortable column holds 45 to 75 characters. Text meant to be read at a distance needs 1 inch of cap height for every 20 feet of viewing distance.

  1. The headline is set at 54 points. How tall is that in inches?
  2. The body text runs in two equal columns across the 7.5 inch live width, with one gutter 0.25 inches wide between them. How wide is one column?
  3. The body text is 11 point type on 14 point leading, which means each line takes 14 points of vertical space. The text block is 3.5 inches tall. How many full lines fit?
  4. Using the studio rule that the average character is half as wide as the type size, how many whole characters fit on one line of 11 point type in the column you found in item 2?
  5. Does the line length from item 4 sit inside the comfortable range of 45 to 75 characters? Answer yes or no.
  6. How many characters does the whole text block hold, using your answers from items 3 and 4?
  7. Counting 6 characters per word, including the space after each word, how many words does the text block hold?
  8. The same notice is enlarged for a lobby board that people read from 20 feet away. Using the studio rule, what cap height does the lobby headline need?
  9. In this typeface the cap height is 0.7 of the type size. What type size, in points, produces the cap height from item 8? Round up to the next whole point.
  10. The notice contains the utility name, the instruction to boil water, the reason for the notice, and a phone number. Which one belongs at the top level of the hierarchy, and why?
  11. A colleague suggests setting the entire notice in capital letters so it looks urgent. Explain one reason that choice makes the notice harder to read.

From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.

Answer Key
  1. Answer: 0.75 inches. Dividing 54 points by 72 points per inch gives 0.75 inches.
  2. Answer: 3.625 inches. The gutter takes 0.25 inches from the 7.5 inch live width, leaving 7.25 inches for two columns, and 7.25 divided by 2 is 3.625 inches.
  3. Answer: 18 lines. The 3.5 inch block equals 252 points, and 252 divided by 14 points per line is exactly 18 lines.
  4. Answer: 47 characters. The column is 3.625 inches, or 261 points, and each character averages 5.5 points, so 261 divided by 5.5 is 47.45, which rounds down to 47 whole characters.
  5. Answer: Yes. A 47 character line sits inside the 45 to 75 character range, near the tight end of it.
  6. Answer: 846 characters. Multiplying 18 lines by 47 characters per line gives 846 characters.
  7. Answer: 141 words. Dividing 846 characters by 6 characters per word gives 141 words.
  8. Answer: 1 inch. The rule gives 1 inch of cap height for every 20 feet, and the board is read from 20 feet.
  9. Answer: 103 points. Dividing 1 inch by 0.7 gives 1.4286 inches, which is 102.86 points, and rounding up gives 103 points.
  10. Answer: The instruction to boil water. It is the only line that tells a reader what to do, so it has to stay legible at the greatest distance and with the least attention from the reader. The reason for the notice belongs at the second level, and the utility name and phone number belong in the contact block.
  11. Answer: Full capitals remove the ascenders and descenders that give a word its outline, so readers lose the shape cue they use to recognize words quickly. All-capital text also takes more horizontal space, which pushes the column past the comfortable measure and forces either a smaller size or more lines.

Differentiation

Support

Give students a sheet with the live area, the two columns, and the gutter already ruled, so their work begins at item 3. Provide a conversion strip listing common point sizes with their inch equivalents, and work item 4 aloud with a small group before releasing them to items 5 through 7. Allow calculators throughout.

Extension

Ask students to redesign the notice for a single column at the full live width and to report what happens to the character count per line. They should then state the smallest body size that keeps the measure inside the comfortable range at that width, show the arithmetic, and write two sentences on why a wider column changes the leading a designer would choose.

ELL supports

Pre-teach hierarchy, leading, measure, and cap height using a marked-up printed sample where each term is labeled on the page itself, and leave that sample posted. Provide a bilingual glossary card for the four terms. Allow items 10 and 11 to be answered with an annotated sketch and a short phrase, and supply sentence frames such as "The largest line should be ___ because a reader needs to ___."

Extensions

Have students set the same three-level hierarchy for a door hanger 4.25 inches wide, which forces a single narrow column and a much shorter headline. Ask them to compare the two layouts and to name the one piece of content they would cut from the door hanger, along with the reason. This is also a natural place to discuss who writes these notices in a real utility, since the drafting usually falls to a public information officer working from language a state regulator has already approved.