Make it all readable!

Book Review: Type & Layout: Are You Communicating or Just Making Pretty Shapes by Colin Wheildon

If you are involved in print communication of any kind at all, go right now and get this book: Type & Layout: Are You Communicating or Just Making Pretty Shapes by Colin Wheildon. After several years out of print, it's back.

It's a book about the basics of readability and design. Many designers ignore readability, choosing design that looks good over design that enhances the reader's ability to comprehend. According to the Wheildon's research, here are some things the crush readability:

• Reverse-out type.
  
• Type over color.
  
• Colored (other than black) type.
  
• Sans-serif fonts.
  

Sans-serif type is hard to read! Is your head spinning yet? Many very common design practices are destructive to communication. Worse yet, a shocking percentage of "brand standards" are directly opposed to readabilty principles -- it's so consistently this way, I wonder if the Brand Shamans read Type and Layout, but mistake the bad examples for recommendations. (That would fit the Brand Shaman mold.)

There's much more in the book. Some of the principles in this book are common sense. Others will shock you. Either way, it will help you get your designers back on the job of communicating, not only creating visual art. Just get the book.

If you respect your donors, you will make sure you aren't putting barriers in front of their ability to read your material.

Comments

[Paul Nicholson]

1) Proper use of cascading style sheets make this a non-issue. Users can always switch over to 'high contrast' versions of pages if needed

2) you do realize that you exclusively use sans serif fonts on your blog don't you?

3) In today's age, readability comes in second to attractiveness. Much of this depends on the market that is trying to be reached of course. Who cares how easy to read your page is if it looks boring and no one wants to read it?

[Carrie Miller]

Isn't this book about print design? Because "readable" online typefaces are usually identified as sans-serif. And the rules for print layout and readablity don't translate exactly to those for online layout and readabilty.

[Jeff Brooks]

True. The book is specifically about print design, and doesn't address design for the screen at all. Sans-serif fonts (such as Arial and Verdana) are more readable online than venerable serif fonts like Times. You always hope designers are thinking about the medium they're in, and design accordingly.