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Type & Layout: Are you communicating or just making pretty shapes by Colin Wheildon
"This may well be the most important book on print design and typography ever published. Every publisher, advertiser, writer and designer must own this . . ."
Denny Hatch, Editor of Target Marketing magazine
How do you create good design for COMMUNICATING? Colin Wheildon conducted studies that had people read material presented in different typefaces, layouts, and colors. Then he tested the subjects to determine their understanding of what they read. This book reports his statistically significant results from his 9 years of research.
Whereas most designers have opinions or preferences as to what works and what doesn't, this book makes all those opinions obsolete by presenting the actual FACTS.
Through hundreds of examples, Wheildon illustrates:
- Exactly where headlines should be placed - and he QUANTIFIES how much response drops by moving headlines to different locations!
- Why a serif typeface like Times New Roman - long used in newspapers and books - is more than 5 times easier for average readers to comprehend than a sans-serif typeface like Helvetica or Arial.
- Reverse type - white type on a dark background - makes "good comprehension" fall to zero! "Poor comprehension" rose to 88%.
- Colored or bold text is harder to read - and slower to comprehend - than black.
- Italics can be used for emphasis - including entire paragraphs - as it doesn't significantly affect comprehension.
- Fully justified text shows the best comprehension levels, even over ragged right text.
- All caps headlines reduce comprehension significantly. And vibrant color in headlines actually reduces readability and comprehension of the text that follows it! The darker the color of the headline, the greater the comprehension of the text following it. (Conclusion: when using spot color in a headline, choose darker colors.)
- Black body text printed on a light tint - a 10% screen -- is seen as the most attractive combination of text color and background. In fact, a 10% screen can act as an "eye magnet", while retaining good reader comprehension. (The exception: using a screen of the type color, which doesn't afford enough contrast and reduces comprehension.)
Plus media-specific test results covering print ads, mailers, flyers, and more.
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