From d.sless at communication.org.au Tue Apr 1 11:22:43 2008 From: d.sless at communication.org.au (David Sless) Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2008 20:22:43 +1100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: re live testing In-Reply-To: <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> On 27/03/2008, at 9:10 PM, Rob Waller wrote: > It's also worth saying that as time progresses, the need to test > probably gets greater - a few years ago we were mostly designing > bills that had been rather primitive printouts, and the new designs > were always better than the old. Now, the redesign is quite likely > to be of a bill that has already been through the process, but now > needs updating because products or brands have changed. I think this is true. But with a caveat. Our long range monitoring of such documents shows that they deteriorate quite quickly in use, more so these days with the rapid product and branding changes that Rob mentions. In one of our recent published case histories, we found that a document we originally designed in 1988 had a fairly long life, but by 2003 it had deteriorated from its original excellent performance level to a level where only 42% of customers could use it at an acceptable level. The redesign brought the document up to an acceptable level, but within months of implementation we began to see some deterioration of performance. Mocking up alternative designs for testing, though, can be a real chore. Rob described part of the horror in this type of work > we had to format pages of itemised calls, and it was no one's > favourite task. Add to Rob's un-favourite tasks, the task we sometimes get: hand crafting multiple versions of the same document 'just to illustrate' what each variant will look like. Using software like Quark or InDesign to do this type of repetitive task can drive one to madness. Thankfully, some of the newer software used for driving these dynamic document systems allow for rapid modification and prototyping, saving us all from these horrible tasks. David -- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080401/73f9b0e5/attachment-0001.htm From ralexm at terra.com.br Tue Apr 1 17:39:58 2008 From: ralexm at terra.com.br (Ricardo Martins) Date: Tue, 01 Apr 2008 12:39:58 -0300 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: re live testing In-Reply-To: <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> Message-ID: <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080401/d4a1cc4f/attachment.htm From d.sless at communication.org.au Wed Apr 2 00:43:27 2008 From: d.sless at communication.org.au (David Sless) Date: Wed, 2 Apr 2008 09:43:27 +1100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: re live testing In-Reply-To: <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> Message-ID: <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> On 02/04/2008, at 2:39 AM, Ricardo Martins wrote: > Fortunately, in the last versions, Indesign added some nice > resources to integrate dynamic data through simple databases or XML. > You can populate an TXT file with different data and Indesign loads > it and generate different versions of a document. They can be > printed, exported to PDF or imported by other softwares Thanks for that, Ricardo. I will pass that on to our studio and avoid the workers' compensation cases for work induced insanity. We are using the latest indesign and enjoying many of its features, but I hadn't thought of that. It's obviously there with xml. I just hadn't made the connection. David -- blog: www.communication.org.au/dsblog web: http://www.communication.org.au Professor David Sless BA MSc FRSA CEO ? Communication Research Institute ? ? helping people communicate with people ? Mobile: +61 (0)412 356 795 Phone: +61 (0)3 9489 8640 60 Park Street ? Fitzroy North ? Melbourne ? Australia ? 3068 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080402/f5ce55a0/attachment-0001.htm -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: CRI-lh-logo-col.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 1634 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080402/f5ce55a0/attachment-0001.jpg From ralexm at terra.com.br Wed Apr 2 01:14:17 2008 From: ralexm at terra.com.br (Ricardo Martins) Date: Tue, 01 Apr 2008 20:14:17 -0300 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: re live testing In-Reply-To: <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> Message-ID: <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080401/6c3c7736/attachment.htm -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 1634 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080401/6c3c7736/attachment.jpeg From d.sless at communication.org.au Tue Apr 1 11:22:43 2008 From: d.sless at communication.org.au (David Sless) Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2008 20:22:43 +1100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: re live testing In-Reply-To: <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> On 27/03/2008, at 9:10 PM, Rob Waller wrote: > It's also worth saying that as time progresses, the need to test > probably gets greater - a few years ago we were mostly designing > bills that had been rather primitive printouts, and the new designs > were always better than the old. Now, the redesign is quite likely > to be of a bill that has already been through the process, but now > needs updating because products or brands have changed. I think this is true. But with a caveat. Our long range monitoring of such documents shows that they deteriorate quite quickly in use, more so these days with the rapid product and branding changes that Rob mentions. In one of our recent published case histories, we found that a document we originally designed in 1988 had a fairly long life, but by 2003 it had deteriorated from its original excellent performance level to a level where only 42% of customers could use it at an acceptable level. The redesign brought the document up to an acceptable level, but within months of implementation we began to see some deterioration of performance. Mocking up alternative designs for testing, though, can be a real chore. Rob described part of the horror in this type of work > we had to format pages of itemised calls, and it was no one's > favourite task. Add to Rob's un-favourite tasks, the task we sometimes get: hand crafting multiple versions of the same document 'just to illustrate' what each variant will look like. Using software like Quark or InDesign to do this type of repetitive task can drive one to madness. Thankfully, some of the newer software used for driving these dynamic document systems allow for rapid modification and prototyping, saving us all from these horrible tasks. David -- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080401/73f9b0e5/attachment-0002.htm From ralexm at terra.com.br Tue Apr 1 17:39:58 2008 From: ralexm at terra.com.br (Ricardo Martins) Date: Tue, 01 Apr 2008 12:39:58 -0300 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: re live testing In-Reply-To: <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> Message-ID: <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080401/d4a1cc4f/attachment-0002.htm From d.sless at communication.org.au Wed Apr 2 00:43:27 2008 From: d.sless at communication.org.au (David Sless) Date: Wed, 2 Apr 2008 09:43:27 +1100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: re live testing In-Reply-To: <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> Message-ID: <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> On 02/04/2008, at 2:39 AM, Ricardo Martins wrote: > Fortunately, in the last versions, Indesign added some nice > resources to integrate dynamic data through simple databases or XML. > You can populate an TXT file with different data and Indesign loads > it and generate different versions of a document. They can be > printed, exported to PDF or imported by other softwares Thanks for that, Ricardo. I will pass that on to our studio and avoid the workers' compensation cases for work induced insanity. We are using the latest indesign and enjoying many of its features, but I hadn't thought of that. It's obviously there with xml. I just hadn't made the connection. David -- blog: www.communication.org.au/dsblog web: http://www.communication.org.au Professor David Sless BA MSc FRSA CEO ? Communication Research Institute ? ? helping people communicate with people ? Mobile: +61 (0)412 356 795 Phone: +61 (0)3 9489 8640 60 Park Street ? Fitzroy North ? Melbourne ? Australia ? 3068 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080402/f5ce55a0/attachment-0002.htm -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: CRI-lh-logo-col.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 1634 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080402/f5ce55a0/attachment-0002.jpg From ralexm at terra.com.br Wed Apr 2 01:14:17 2008 From: ralexm at terra.com.br (Ricardo Martins) Date: Tue, 01 Apr 2008 20:14:17 -0300 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: re live testing In-Reply-To: <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> Message-ID: <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080401/6c3c7736/attachment-0001.htm -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 1634 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080401/6c3c7736/attachment-0001.jpeg From d.sless at communication.org.au Tue Apr 1 11:22:43 2008 From: d.sless at communication.org.au (David Sless) Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2008 20:22:43 +1100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: re live testing In-Reply-To: <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> On 27/03/2008, at 9:10 PM, Rob Waller wrote: > It's also worth saying that as time progresses, the need to test > probably gets greater - a few years ago we were mostly designing > bills that had been rather primitive printouts, and the new designs > were always better than the old. Now, the redesign is quite likely > to be of a bill that has already been through the process, but now > needs updating because products or brands have changed. I think this is true. But with a caveat. Our long range monitoring of such documents shows that they deteriorate quite quickly in use, more so these days with the rapid product and branding changes that Rob mentions. In one of our recent published case histories, we found that a document we originally designed in 1988 had a fairly long life, but by 2003 it had deteriorated from its original excellent performance level to a level where only 42% of customers could use it at an acceptable level. The redesign brought the document up to an acceptable level, but within months of implementation we began to see some deterioration of performance. Mocking up alternative designs for testing, though, can be a real chore. Rob described part of the horror in this type of work > we had to format pages of itemised calls, and it was no one's > favourite task. Add to Rob's un-favourite tasks, the task we sometimes get: hand crafting multiple versions of the same document 'just to illustrate' what each variant will look like. Using software like Quark or InDesign to do this type of repetitive task can drive one to madness. Thankfully, some of the newer software used for driving these dynamic document systems allow for rapid modification and prototyping, saving us all from these horrible tasks. David -- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080401/73f9b0e5/attachment-0003.htm From ralexm at terra.com.br Tue Apr 1 17:39:58 2008 From: ralexm at terra.com.br (Ricardo Martins) Date: Tue, 01 Apr 2008 12:39:58 -0300 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: re live testing In-Reply-To: <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> Message-ID: <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080401/d4a1cc4f/attachment-0003.htm From d.sless at communication.org.au Wed Apr 2 00:43:27 2008 From: d.sless at communication.org.au (David Sless) Date: Wed, 2 Apr 2008 09:43:27 +1100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: re live testing In-Reply-To: <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> Message-ID: <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> On 02/04/2008, at 2:39 AM, Ricardo Martins wrote: > Fortunately, in the last versions, Indesign added some nice > resources to integrate dynamic data through simple databases or XML. > You can populate an TXT file with different data and Indesign loads > it and generate different versions of a document. They can be > printed, exported to PDF or imported by other softwares Thanks for that, Ricardo. I will pass that on to our studio and avoid the workers' compensation cases for work induced insanity. We are using the latest indesign and enjoying many of its features, but I hadn't thought of that. It's obviously there with xml. I just hadn't made the connection. David -- blog: www.communication.org.au/dsblog web: http://www.communication.org.au Professor David Sless BA MSc FRSA CEO ? Communication Research Institute ? ? helping people communicate with people ? Mobile: +61 (0)412 356 795 Phone: +61 (0)3 9489 8640 60 Park Street ? Fitzroy North ? Melbourne ? Australia ? 3068 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080402/f5ce55a0/attachment-0003.htm -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: CRI-lh-logo-col.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 1634 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080402/f5ce55a0/attachment-0003.jpg From ralexm at terra.com.br Wed Apr 2 01:14:17 2008 From: ralexm at terra.com.br (Ricardo Martins) Date: Tue, 01 Apr 2008 20:14:17 -0300 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: re live testing In-Reply-To: <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> Message-ID: <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080401/6c3c7736/attachment-0002.htm -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 1634 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080401/6c3c7736/attachment-0002.jpeg From p.stiff at reading.ac.uk Thu Apr 3 18:33:25 2008 From: p.stiff at reading.ac.uk (Paul Stiff) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 17:33:25 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> Message-ID: <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Today (3 April 2008) on BBC Radio 4?s consumer affairs programme, ?You and yours?, there was an item about ?small print?. This was prompted by Labour MP Nick Palmer?s recent proposal in (the UK) parliament of ?a Bill to make requirements regarding the minimum size of print in certain documents, including those relating to advertising and contracts ... The Bill's objective is ... to ensure that customers are reasonably able to read what [the terms and conditions in advertisements or contracts] say? On radio, the ?You and yours? presenter summarized the Bill?s practical proposal, a legal minimum size for the text of contractual offers, T&Cs, etc: ?at least two millimetres high or twelve point font size?. A speaker representing the Royal National Institute for the Blind then supported the proposal; he could read ?standard size print? only with a magnifying glass. He was followed by MP Nick Palmer, who began with a correction: ?a factual point, it?s two centimetres, rather than two millimetres?. A representative of the Direct Marketing Association was later asked by the Y&Y presenter: ?Would the industry be willing to print larger text, two centimetres high?? DMA person: ?Two centimetres is quite ...? [she was going to say ?large?, but was interrupted by:] Y&Y presenter: ?I?m so sorry, twelve point font size?. And there we leave them, all still a bit confused about how to describe the size of this stuff. [You can hear them via ?listen again? at: ] A point [ho-ho] about describing ?type size? on paper: Attempts to regulate this aspect of the appearance of published text can start with a generalized guideline (e.g., ?You should provide large print/Braille versions of all literature, such as menus, instructions, etc? or ?Large enough to be read by a person wearing spectacles?) but eventually they have to define in numeric terms what they mean by ?large? and ?small?. But most readers of this will know that some ?fonts? at ?twelve point size? look smaller than other ?fonts? at ?ten point size?. That is, bigger is sometimes smaller than smaller. And vice versa. This peculiarity is, of course, not confined to regulation and law. It arises any time anyone needs to make an objective description of this simple typographic dimension. It is possible to be objectively precise about size, but the people who would have to implement typographic-appearance regulations through a specification of some kind are often neither scientists nor even printers or designers. So it would probably be unhelpful to define size in terms such as, for example, degrees of visual angle subtended by the viewed object on the viewer?s retina at a given viewing distance. Anyway, people sometimes want to be able to measure ?type size?, in order to check it themselves and make comparisons. But they usually find it hard to do so. And whatever they measure, they often don?t find it easy to locate an equivalent -- to what they measured -- in the dialog box (formatting palette, whatever) of the software application that they use to produce the required ?large? (or ?small?) print. So, is there a solution to this (old) problem? Paul Stiff From brian at brianparkinson.co.uk Thu Apr 3 19:17:05 2008 From: brian at brianparkinson.co.uk (Brian Parkinson) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 18:17:05 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: <9A8A5853-BBF8-4A78-90EE-667C38F2AE45@brianparkinson.co.uk> Good to hear your voice again Paul. How are you? All well here - lots of work at the moment - some of it interesting. Hope to see you before too long Brian From brian at brianparkinson.co.uk Thu Apr 3 19:17:55 2008 From: brian at brianparkinson.co.uk (Brian Parkinson) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 18:17:55 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: This proposal needs to go further I think - readable type has to go hand in hand with clearly written text. If the content is impenetrable legalese, even 20cm lettering won't help people to understand it. Brian Parkinson On 3 Apr 2008, at April 3 5:33 pm, Paul Stiff wrote: > This was prompted by Labour MP Nick Palmer?s recent proposal in (the > UK) parliament of ?a Bill to make requirements regarding the minimum > size of print in certain documents, including those relating to > advertising and contracts ... The Bill's objective is ... to ensure > that customers are reasonably able to read what [the terms and > conditions in advertisements or contracts] say? From waarde at glo.be Thu Apr 3 20:52:31 2008 From: waarde at glo.be (Karel van der Waarde) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 20:52:31 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: Dear Paul, Brian, It remains a pleasant discussion. It might be worth splitting this issue into two: a. Determining if text can be read. I don't think there is any typesize that would 'enable people to read a text'. The typesize on medical package leaflets is frequently 'too small' for patients, but the same patients can read the back of a lottery ticket without any problems ... b. Developing regulations and laws. Some of the information about medicines must be a specific typesize. The EU-readability guideline states that package leaflets must be in a typsize of "8 point Didot". [I've got no idea why they use a Didot-unit, why they specify non-metric measurements, nor where the '8' came from.] But even with a specified typesize, it is very easy to make a text illegible. Just print 8 point text (or 20 point) in a pale yellow on a slightly off-white background and print every second word upside down and in reverse. Even a 'readability formula' wouldn't notice this ... Unfortunately, specifying a typesize in a regulation also means that it must be measurable. It is no good to state '12 point' if nobody is able to check if a printed text is really 12 points ... The only person who can really tell if a text can be read and understood is a reader. [Well trained and experienced designers can make a good guess, but it remains a guess.] I'm convinced that we have to ask a small number of readers to see if our guesses are correct or need to be modified. Technology has developed a little so we can actually provide most information in most sizes - on request. And that solves the regulatory problem as well. Any law in this area must make it obligatory to involve people (non-designers, readers, potential users) in the design process and ask them to use texts. The laws should simply ask for proof that 'a document enables people to act appropriately'. This proof should indicate which people should be enabled, which actions are relevant, and what appropriate levels of success are. If visually impaired people need to act, than the information must be supplied in a format that 'enables a visually impaired person to act appropriately'. Same for people who have difficulties reading English, or difficulties in reading at all. It's a serious shortcoming of the information design community that we have not been able to convince politicians in the last 30 years or so that graphic design literature is not really suitable as a base for legislation. It's a serious shortcoming of politicians that they still base regulations on the production of large quantities of identically printed paper sheets. Digital technology makes it relatively simple to provide information in several formats (large print, small print, sound), on screen and on paper, and in all required languages. It seems that the UK Parliament is again fighting against the wrong symptoms. They did the same in 1848 when they adopted the 'Nuisances removal and contagious diseases prevention act' that was based on the idea that cholera was caused by bad smells. Unfortunately, removing the bad smell did not protect against cholera. Dumping the waste in the Thames actually caused another 15.000 cholera-casualties in 1848 and 1849. In other words, if you look at 'small print' only, it is unlikely any law can 'ensure that customers are reasonably able to read what they say'. Removing 'small type' from all documents does not ensure that people are able to read what they say'. Involving people in the development process and providing information in all required formats might need to be considered. Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be >Today (3 April 2008) on BBC Radio 4?s consumer affairs programme,? >?You and yours?, there was an item about ?small print?. > >This was prompted by Labour MP Nick Palmer?s recent proposal in (the? >UK) parliament of ?a Bill to make requirements regarding the minimum? >size of print in certain documents, including those relating to? >advertising and contracts ... The Bill's objective is ... to ensure? >that customers are reasonably able to read what [the terms and? >conditions in advertisements or contracts] say? > >debtext/80226-0006.htm#08022642000680> > >On radio, the ?You and yours? presenter summarized the Bill?s? >practical proposal, a legal minimum size for the text of contractual? >offers, T&Cs, etc: ?at least two millimetres high or twelve point? >font size?. > >A speaker representing the Royal National Institute for the Blind? >then supported the proposal; he could read ?standard size print? only? >with a magnifying glass. > >He was followed by MP Nick Palmer, who began with a correction: ?a? >factual point, it?s two centimetres, rather than two millimetres?. > >A representative of the Direct Marketing Association was later asked? >by the Y&Y presenter: ?Would the industry be willing to print larger? >text, two centimetres high?? > >DMA person: ?Two centimetres is quite ...? > >[she was going to say ?large?, but was interrupted by:] > >Y&Y presenter: ?I?m so sorry, twelve point font size?. > >And there we leave them, all still a bit confused about how to? >describe the size of this stuff. [You can hear them via ?listen? >again? at: ] > >A point [ho-ho] about describing ?type size? on paper: > >Attempts to regulate this aspect of the appearance of published text? >can start with a generalized guideline (e.g., ?You should provide? >large print/Braille versions of all literature, such as menus,? >instructions, etc? or ?Large enough to be read by a person wearing? >spectacles?) but eventually they have to define in numeric terms what? >they mean by ?large? and ?small?. > >But most readers of this will know that some ?fonts? at ?twelve point? >size? look smaller than other ?fonts? at ?ten point size?. That is,? >bigger is sometimes smaller than smaller. And vice versa. > >This peculiarity is, of course, not confined to regulation and law.? >It arises any time anyone needs to make an objective description of? >this simple typographic dimension. > >It is possible to be objectively precise about size, but the people? >who would have to implement typographic-appearance regulations? >through a specification of some kind are often neither scientists nor? >even printers or designers. So it would probably be unhelpful to? >define size in terms such as, for example, degrees of visual angle? >subtended by the viewed object on the viewer?s retina at a given? >viewing distance. > >Anyway, people sometimes want to be able to measure ?type size?, in? >order to check it themselves and make comparisons. But they usually? >find it hard to do so. And whatever they measure, they often don?t? >find it easy to locate an equivalent -- to what they measured -- in? >the dialog box (formatting palette, whatever) of the software? >application that they use to produce the required ?large? (or? >?small?) print. > >So, is there a solution to this (old) problem? > >Paul Stiff From katie at raincharm.co.uk Thu Apr 3 21:17:26 2008 From: katie at raincharm.co.uk (Raincharm Communications Limited) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 20:17:26 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters reply Message-ID: <856FAC7F4D054E9BACABFF2503A89687@KatiePC> Hi Just read the post relating to the recent Radio 4 debate on font size and what should be set as a standard. As former publications and editorial manager at the Disability Rights Commission (DRC), I was involved in the writing and implementation of an overall publications strategy which included a style guide on font size, typeface and various other accessibility issues. When the DRC began we decided to set 14 point as a standard font size for all documents, excepting those in Easy Read (aimed at people with learning disabilities) which were set at 16 point. It was always quite a struggle convincing other organisations to do the same mainly due to the cost implications - bigger font size meaning more pages and therefore a higher cost. However, once the budget issues are taken out of the equation one is left with the simple fact that a 14 point font size is much clearer and easier to read. I do remember we struggled with maintaining this approach when buying ad space as the cost is so exorbitant in 14 point. Another bone of contention was font size of footnotes in lengthy research documents but we always stuck to our guns and it seemed to pay off! Now working as a consultant advising businesses and other organisations on how to make their information provision more accessible and inclusive, I do still recommend a 14 point font size. Surely it is more important to improve the quality and accessibility of a document for everyone, not only people with impairments but also those who may have low literacy skills or for whom English is not their first language. This approach only ends up benefiting everyone. Equality of opportunity and inclusivity can only be achieved if people commit to what is an exemplary standard ie what goes above and beyond the 'norm'. It is all about setting a precedent for best practice. Once this has been accepted as the standard then others will follow suit. Best Wishes Katie Grant Director Raincharm Communications Ltd Tel 07971 909007 Registered No. 6267862 VAT No. 913 3364 44 www.raincharm.co.uk -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080403/b76d2e33/attachment.htm From conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk Thu Apr 3 22:57:24 2008 From: conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk (Conrad Taylor) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 21:57:24 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: Paul Stiff wrote, sagely and entertainingly: >Attempts to regulate this aspect of the appearance of published text? >can start with a generalized guideline (e.g., ?You should provide? >large print/Braille versions of all literature, such as menus,? >instructions, etc? or ?Large enough to be read by a person wearing? >spectacles?) but eventually they have to define in numeric terms what? >they mean by ?large? and ?small?. > >But most readers of this will know that some ?fonts? at ?twelve point? >size? look smaller than other ?fonts? at ?ten point size?. That is, >bigger is sometimes smaller than smaller. And vice versa. Since 12pt in one font may be either larger or smaller, more or less legible than 12pt in another font, the obvious answer for the unimaginative and unskilled legislator is to define not only the size, but the font itself. In the British context, I am sure this New Labour government would be very happy to define the specifications as Arial 14pt. They bow to Microsoft in much else, so why not this? This would cap Microsoft's success in getting approval from an exhausted international standards community for their OfficeOpen XML "standard". :-) Conrad -- From d.sless at communication.org.au Fri Apr 4 05:17:44 2008 From: d.sless at communication.org.au (David Sless) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 14:17:44 +1100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: Hi All, To underline and elaborate what Karel has said on this subject. The problem regulators face, put simply, is they don't have the necessary understanding of ID to come up with sensible regulation of information. This is made worse by that the fact (as Donald Rumsfeld might have put it) they don't know they don't know. At CRI we have been working on this problem for some time, with mixed success. You can see some of our efforts on this in our publications, and, as Karel knows because he has done a lot of work on it, we are working on something at the moment that will push the case for better training of regulators a bit further. But it is hard and largely unrewarding work. Most EU regulators with whom I have engaged on this subject regard me as 'unhelpful' and some refuse to attend conferences, if I am a speaker (mind you, I feel like that myself sometimes). The basic shift that needs to occur is from regulating content to regulating performance Put differently it's a matter of looking at ends rather than means. The end is readable text. As we all agree, regulating font size is a poor means of getting to that particular outcome. I could go on but? David -- blog: www.communication.org.au/dsblog web: http://www.communication.org.au -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080404/167a1d69/attachment-0001.htm From d.sless at communication.org.au Tue Apr 1 11:22:43 2008 From: d.sless at communication.org.au (David Sless) Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2008 20:22:43 +1100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: re live testing In-Reply-To: <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> On 27/03/2008, at 9:10 PM, Rob Waller wrote: > It's also worth saying that as time progresses, the need to test > probably gets greater - a few years ago we were mostly designing > bills that had been rather primitive printouts, and the new designs > were always better than the old. Now, the redesign is quite likely > to be of a bill that has already been through the process, but now > needs updating because products or brands have changed. I think this is true. But with a caveat. Our long range monitoring of such documents shows that they deteriorate quite quickly in use, more so these days with the rapid product and branding changes that Rob mentions. In one of our recent published case histories, we found that a document we originally designed in 1988 had a fairly long life, but by 2003 it had deteriorated from its original excellent performance level to a level where only 42% of customers could use it at an acceptable level. The redesign brought the document up to an acceptable level, but within months of implementation we began to see some deterioration of performance. Mocking up alternative designs for testing, though, can be a real chore. Rob described part of the horror in this type of work > we had to format pages of itemised calls, and it was no one's > favourite task. Add to Rob's un-favourite tasks, the task we sometimes get: hand crafting multiple versions of the same document 'just to illustrate' what each variant will look like. Using software like Quark or InDesign to do this type of repetitive task can drive one to madness. Thankfully, some of the newer software used for driving these dynamic document systems allow for rapid modification and prototyping, saving us all from these horrible tasks. David -- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080401/73f9b0e5/attachment-0004.htm From ralexm at terra.com.br Tue Apr 1 17:39:58 2008 From: ralexm at terra.com.br (Ricardo Martins) Date: Tue, 01 Apr 2008 12:39:58 -0300 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: re live testing In-Reply-To: <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> Message-ID: <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080401/d4a1cc4f/attachment-0004.htm From d.sless at communication.org.au Wed Apr 2 00:43:27 2008 From: d.sless at communication.org.au (David Sless) Date: Wed, 2 Apr 2008 09:43:27 +1100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: re live testing In-Reply-To: <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> Message-ID: <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> On 02/04/2008, at 2:39 AM, Ricardo Martins wrote: > Fortunately, in the last versions, Indesign added some nice > resources to integrate dynamic data through simple databases or XML. > You can populate an TXT file with different data and Indesign loads > it and generate different versions of a document. They can be > printed, exported to PDF or imported by other softwares Thanks for that, Ricardo. I will pass that on to our studio and avoid the workers' compensation cases for work induced insanity. We are using the latest indesign and enjoying many of its features, but I hadn't thought of that. It's obviously there with xml. I just hadn't made the connection. David -- blog: www.communication.org.au/dsblog web: http://www.communication.org.au Professor David Sless BA MSc FRSA CEO ? Communication Research Institute ? ? helping people communicate with people ? Mobile: +61 (0)412 356 795 Phone: +61 (0)3 9489 8640 60 Park Street ? Fitzroy North ? Melbourne ? Australia ? 3068 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080402/f5ce55a0/attachment-0004.htm -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: CRI-lh-logo-col.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 1634 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080402/f5ce55a0/attachment-0004.jpg From ralexm at terra.com.br Wed Apr 2 01:14:17 2008 From: ralexm at terra.com.br (Ricardo Martins) Date: Tue, 01 Apr 2008 20:14:17 -0300 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: re live testing In-Reply-To: <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> Message-ID: <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080401/6c3c7736/attachment-0004.htm -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 1634 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080401/6c3c7736/attachment-0004.jpeg From p.stiff at reading.ac.uk Thu Apr 3 18:33:25 2008 From: p.stiff at reading.ac.uk (Paul Stiff) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 17:33:25 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> Message-ID: <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Today (3 April 2008) on BBC Radio 4?s consumer affairs programme, ?You and yours?, there was an item about ?small print?. This was prompted by Labour MP Nick Palmer?s recent proposal in (the UK) parliament of ?a Bill to make requirements regarding the minimum size of print in certain documents, including those relating to advertising and contracts ... The Bill's objective is ... to ensure that customers are reasonably able to read what [the terms and conditions in advertisements or contracts] say? On radio, the ?You and yours? presenter summarized the Bill?s practical proposal, a legal minimum size for the text of contractual offers, T&Cs, etc: ?at least two millimetres high or twelve point font size?. A speaker representing the Royal National Institute for the Blind then supported the proposal; he could read ?standard size print? only with a magnifying glass. He was followed by MP Nick Palmer, who began with a correction: ?a factual point, it?s two centimetres, rather than two millimetres?. A representative of the Direct Marketing Association was later asked by the Y&Y presenter: ?Would the industry be willing to print larger text, two centimetres high?? DMA person: ?Two centimetres is quite ...? [she was going to say ?large?, but was interrupted by:] Y&Y presenter: ?I?m so sorry, twelve point font size?. And there we leave them, all still a bit confused about how to describe the size of this stuff. [You can hear them via ?listen again? at: ] A point [ho-ho] about describing ?type size? on paper: Attempts to regulate this aspect of the appearance of published text can start with a generalized guideline (e.g., ?You should provide large print/Braille versions of all literature, such as menus, instructions, etc? or ?Large enough to be read by a person wearing spectacles?) but eventually they have to define in numeric terms what they mean by ?large? and ?small?. But most readers of this will know that some ?fonts? at ?twelve point size? look smaller than other ?fonts? at ?ten point size?. That is, bigger is sometimes smaller than smaller. And vice versa. This peculiarity is, of course, not confined to regulation and law. It arises any time anyone needs to make an objective description of this simple typographic dimension. It is possible to be objectively precise about size, but the people who would have to implement typographic-appearance regulations through a specification of some kind are often neither scientists nor even printers or designers. So it would probably be unhelpful to define size in terms such as, for example, degrees of visual angle subtended by the viewed object on the viewer?s retina at a given viewing distance. Anyway, people sometimes want to be able to measure ?type size?, in order to check it themselves and make comparisons. But they usually find it hard to do so. And whatever they measure, they often don?t find it easy to locate an equivalent -- to what they measured -- in the dialog box (formatting palette, whatever) of the software application that they use to produce the required ?large? (or ?small?) print. So, is there a solution to this (old) problem? Paul Stiff From brian at brianparkinson.co.uk Thu Apr 3 19:17:05 2008 From: brian at brianparkinson.co.uk (Brian Parkinson) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 18:17:05 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: <9A8A5853-BBF8-4A78-90EE-667C38F2AE45@brianparkinson.co.uk> Good to hear your voice again Paul. How are you? All well here - lots of work at the moment - some of it interesting. Hope to see you before too long Brian From brian at brianparkinson.co.uk Thu Apr 3 19:17:55 2008 From: brian at brianparkinson.co.uk (Brian Parkinson) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 18:17:55 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: This proposal needs to go further I think - readable type has to go hand in hand with clearly written text. If the content is impenetrable legalese, even 20cm lettering won't help people to understand it. Brian Parkinson On 3 Apr 2008, at April 3 5:33 pm, Paul Stiff wrote: > This was prompted by Labour MP Nick Palmer?s recent proposal in (the > UK) parliament of ?a Bill to make requirements regarding the minimum > size of print in certain documents, including those relating to > advertising and contracts ... The Bill's objective is ... to ensure > that customers are reasonably able to read what [the terms and > conditions in advertisements or contracts] say? From waarde at glo.be Thu Apr 3 20:52:31 2008 From: waarde at glo.be (Karel van der Waarde) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 20:52:31 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: Dear Paul, Brian, It remains a pleasant discussion. It might be worth splitting this issue into two: a. Determining if text can be read. I don't think there is any typesize that would 'enable people to read a text'. The typesize on medical package leaflets is frequently 'too small' for patients, but the same patients can read the back of a lottery ticket without any problems ... b. Developing regulations and laws. Some of the information about medicines must be a specific typesize. The EU-readability guideline states that package leaflets must be in a typsize of "8 point Didot". [I've got no idea why they use a Didot-unit, why they specify non-metric measurements, nor where the '8' came from.] But even with a specified typesize, it is very easy to make a text illegible. Just print 8 point text (or 20 point) in a pale yellow on a slightly off-white background and print every second word upside down and in reverse. Even a 'readability formula' wouldn't notice this ... Unfortunately, specifying a typesize in a regulation also means that it must be measurable. It is no good to state '12 point' if nobody is able to check if a printed text is really 12 points ... The only person who can really tell if a text can be read and understood is a reader. [Well trained and experienced designers can make a good guess, but it remains a guess.] I'm convinced that we have to ask a small number of readers to see if our guesses are correct or need to be modified. Technology has developed a little so we can actually provide most information in most sizes - on request. And that solves the regulatory problem as well. Any law in this area must make it obligatory to involve people (non-designers, readers, potential users) in the design process and ask them to use texts. The laws should simply ask for proof that 'a document enables people to act appropriately'. This proof should indicate which people should be enabled, which actions are relevant, and what appropriate levels of success are. If visually impaired people need to act, than the information must be supplied in a format that 'enables a visually impaired person to act appropriately'. Same for people who have difficulties reading English, or difficulties in reading at all. It's a serious shortcoming of the information design community that we have not been able to convince politicians in the last 30 years or so that graphic design literature is not really suitable as a base for legislation. It's a serious shortcoming of politicians that they still base regulations on the production of large quantities of identically printed paper sheets. Digital technology makes it relatively simple to provide information in several formats (large print, small print, sound), on screen and on paper, and in all required languages. It seems that the UK Parliament is again fighting against the wrong symptoms. They did the same in 1848 when they adopted the 'Nuisances removal and contagious diseases prevention act' that was based on the idea that cholera was caused by bad smells. Unfortunately, removing the bad smell did not protect against cholera. Dumping the waste in the Thames actually caused another 15.000 cholera-casualties in 1848 and 1849. In other words, if you look at 'small print' only, it is unlikely any law can 'ensure that customers are reasonably able to read what they say'. Removing 'small type' from all documents does not ensure that people are able to read what they say'. Involving people in the development process and providing information in all required formats might need to be considered. Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be >Today (3 April 2008) on BBC Radio 4?s consumer affairs programme,? >?You and yours?, there was an item about ?small print?. > >This was prompted by Labour MP Nick Palmer?s recent proposal in (the? >UK) parliament of ?a Bill to make requirements regarding the minimum? >size of print in certain documents, including those relating to? >advertising and contracts ... The Bill's objective is ... to ensure? >that customers are reasonably able to read what [the terms and? >conditions in advertisements or contracts] say? > >debtext/80226-0006.htm#08022642000680> > >On radio, the ?You and yours? presenter summarized the Bill?s? >practical proposal, a legal minimum size for the text of contractual? >offers, T&Cs, etc: ?at least two millimetres high or twelve point? >font size?. > >A speaker representing the Royal National Institute for the Blind? >then supported the proposal; he could read ?standard size print? only? >with a magnifying glass. > >He was followed by MP Nick Palmer, who began with a correction: ?a? >factual point, it?s two centimetres, rather than two millimetres?. > >A representative of the Direct Marketing Association was later asked? >by the Y&Y presenter: ?Would the industry be willing to print larger? >text, two centimetres high?? > >DMA person: ?Two centimetres is quite ...? > >[she was going to say ?large?, but was interrupted by:] > >Y&Y presenter: ?I?m so sorry, twelve point font size?. > >And there we leave them, all still a bit confused about how to? >describe the size of this stuff. [You can hear them via ?listen? >again? at: ] > >A point [ho-ho] about describing ?type size? on paper: > >Attempts to regulate this aspect of the appearance of published text? >can start with a generalized guideline (e.g., ?You should provide? >large print/Braille versions of all literature, such as menus,? >instructions, etc? or ?Large enough to be read by a person wearing? >spectacles?) but eventually they have to define in numeric terms what? >they mean by ?large? and ?small?. > >But most readers of this will know that some ?fonts? at ?twelve point? >size? look smaller than other ?fonts? at ?ten point size?. That is,? >bigger is sometimes smaller than smaller. And vice versa. > >This peculiarity is, of course, not confined to regulation and law.? >It arises any time anyone needs to make an objective description of? >this simple typographic dimension. > >It is possible to be objectively precise about size, but the people? >who would have to implement typographic-appearance regulations? >through a specification of some kind are often neither scientists nor? >even printers or designers. So it would probably be unhelpful to? >define size in terms such as, for example, degrees of visual angle? >subtended by the viewed object on the viewer?s retina at a given? >viewing distance. > >Anyway, people sometimes want to be able to measure ?type size?, in? >order to check it themselves and make comparisons. But they usually? >find it hard to do so. And whatever they measure, they often don?t? >find it easy to locate an equivalent -- to what they measured -- in? >the dialog box (formatting palette, whatever) of the software? >application that they use to produce the required ?large? (or? >?small?) print. > >So, is there a solution to this (old) problem? > >Paul Stiff From katie at raincharm.co.uk Thu Apr 3 21:17:26 2008 From: katie at raincharm.co.uk (Raincharm Communications Limited) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 20:17:26 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters reply Message-ID: <856FAC7F4D054E9BACABFF2503A89687@KatiePC> Hi Just read the post relating to the recent Radio 4 debate on font size and what should be set as a standard. As former publications and editorial manager at the Disability Rights Commission (DRC), I was involved in the writing and implementation of an overall publications strategy which included a style guide on font size, typeface and various other accessibility issues. When the DRC began we decided to set 14 point as a standard font size for all documents, excepting those in Easy Read (aimed at people with learning disabilities) which were set at 16 point. It was always quite a struggle convincing other organisations to do the same mainly due to the cost implications - bigger font size meaning more pages and therefore a higher cost. However, once the budget issues are taken out of the equation one is left with the simple fact that a 14 point font size is much clearer and easier to read. I do remember we struggled with maintaining this approach when buying ad space as the cost is so exorbitant in 14 point. Another bone of contention was font size of footnotes in lengthy research documents but we always stuck to our guns and it seemed to pay off! Now working as a consultant advising businesses and other organisations on how to make their information provision more accessible and inclusive, I do still recommend a 14 point font size. Surely it is more important to improve the quality and accessibility of a document for everyone, not only people with impairments but also those who may have low literacy skills or for whom English is not their first language. This approach only ends up benefiting everyone. Equality of opportunity and inclusivity can only be achieved if people commit to what is an exemplary standard ie what goes above and beyond the 'norm'. It is all about setting a precedent for best practice. Once this has been accepted as the standard then others will follow suit. Best Wishes Katie Grant Director Raincharm Communications Ltd Tel 07971 909007 Registered No. 6267862 VAT No. 913 3364 44 www.raincharm.co.uk -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080403/b76d2e33/attachment-0002.htm From conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk Thu Apr 3 22:57:24 2008 From: conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk (Conrad Taylor) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 21:57:24 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: Paul Stiff wrote, sagely and entertainingly: >Attempts to regulate this aspect of the appearance of published text? >can start with a generalized guideline (e.g., ?You should provide? >large print/Braille versions of all literature, such as menus,? >instructions, etc? or ?Large enough to be read by a person wearing? >spectacles?) but eventually they have to define in numeric terms what? >they mean by ?large? and ?small?. > >But most readers of this will know that some ?fonts? at ?twelve point? >size? look smaller than other ?fonts? at ?ten point size?. That is, >bigger is sometimes smaller than smaller. And vice versa. Since 12pt in one font may be either larger or smaller, more or less legible than 12pt in another font, the obvious answer for the unimaginative and unskilled legislator is to define not only the size, but the font itself. In the British context, I am sure this New Labour government would be very happy to define the specifications as Arial 14pt. They bow to Microsoft in much else, so why not this? This would cap Microsoft's success in getting approval from an exhausted international standards community for their OfficeOpen XML "standard". :-) Conrad -- From d.sless at communication.org.au Fri Apr 4 05:17:44 2008 From: d.sless at communication.org.au (David Sless) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 14:17:44 +1100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: Hi All, To underline and elaborate what Karel has said on this subject. The problem regulators face, put simply, is they don't have the necessary understanding of ID to come up with sensible regulation of information. This is made worse by that the fact (as Donald Rumsfeld might have put it) they don't know they don't know. At CRI we have been working on this problem for some time, with mixed success. You can see some of our efforts on this in our publications, and, as Karel knows because he has done a lot of work on it, we are working on something at the moment that will push the case for better training of regulators a bit further. But it is hard and largely unrewarding work. Most EU regulators with whom I have engaged on this subject regard me as 'unhelpful' and some refuse to attend conferences, if I am a speaker (mind you, I feel like that myself sometimes). The basic shift that needs to occur is from regulating content to regulating performance Put differently it's a matter of looking at ends rather than means. The end is readable text. As we all agree, regulating font size is a poor means of getting to that particular outcome. I could go on but? David -- blog: www.communication.org.au/dsblog web: http://www.communication.org.au -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080404/167a1d69/attachment-0002.htm From r.waller at reading.ac.uk Fri Apr 4 10:07:17 2008 From: r.waller at reading.ac.uk (Rob Waller) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 09:07:17 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: <31A43BA4-AA08-42C4-B663-B9C5CD61C158@reading.ac.uk> Can I add a couple of thoughts to the debate? There is undoubtedly a big problem of naive information design becoming enshrined in the law, and there are plenty of historical and current examples of this. However, as a profession we do need to respond to the kind of concerns the politicians are expressing. As an aside I don't believe the fact that 12pt is a vague definition is a big problem in practice - even 12pt Bembo would be more legible than what we get now. More to the point is that to print most terms of business in 12pt of any typeface would lead to acres of paper, and, as others have suggested, would not ensure they are read. Indeed customer research often shows people are intimidated by long documents, even when clearly written. I'm not convinced testing is a universal solution - fine for medicines information perhaps, where a highly regulated product is marketed over a period of time in a stable format, but many of the kind of documents this MP is talking about, which include newspaper advertisements and direct mail, are produced to fast timescales and may even be in personalised formats. I think it would be useful to explore a risk-based approach. This is effectively what legal departments in large organisations do when they assess documents before they go out. For example, in some cases they approve an abbreviated reference to 'terms and conditions apply' whereas in other cases they insist the full set is supplied. About three years ago we surveyed practice among mobile phone companies and found quite a wide range of strategies. As well as the two I've mentioned, we also found quite a common practice of summarising the most important terms of business in larger or bolder type - but you need some kind of risk assessment to tell you what is important. A risk-based approach means assessing each item and coming to a view about (a) the likelihood of it being misunderstood, (b) the likelihood of the eventuality it caters for actually happening, and (c) the potential damage to the customer (or indeed to the company's relationship with the customer, and its reputation) if it is misunderstood and the eventuality happens. The risk assessment process could be tested with customers, even if every document cannot be. An example of a low risk item might be the part of the contract that states that if the company is sold to another company, the contract will be transferred to the buyer without changes. Not an everyday occurrence, and not one that would bother most people so long as the service continues without material changes. A high risk item might be the penalties for early release from a contract, or how complaints are handled. Most of us would not mind, and would not be penalised for our laziness, if the very low risk items were in 5pt, or for that matter printed on a banana and fired into space. So long as the high risk items were prominent, legible and designed to be taken seriously. An anecdotal example of this is my own claim under insurance that I was sold by my water supplier to cover problems with drains. It turned out (deep in the small print) that if my drain went under someone else's land to reach the main sewer I was not covered. Yet this is the most common arrangement in the newly built town where I live. So almost no one here can actually claim under this policy. A risk assessment of this clause would have told them there is a very high risk of this eventuality, that it threatens the whole point of the policy, and therefore there is highly likely to be damage to the customer relationship. And to make sure it does damage their reputation in some small way, I will mention that the company is Anglian Water and the 'cover' is provided for them by Homeserve. Rob Waller -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080404/5337615e/attachment.htm From teather at compuserve.com Fri Apr 4 10:18:42 2008 From: teather at compuserve.com (Jane Teather) Date: Fri, 04 Apr 2008 09:18:42 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters reply In-Reply-To: <856FAC7F4D054E9BACABFF2503A89687@KatiePC> References: <856FAC7F4D054E9BACABFF2503A89687@KatiePC> Message-ID: <47F5E462.4050503@compuserve.com> Just adding my voice to those of Karel and David ? this is immensely frustrating for those of us who work on information about medicines and healthcare. As we know, size in points is a very inexact predictor of actual type size, and there?s a huge amount more to legibility than just size. But regulators are ever keen to impose over-simplistic rules, even when these are based on ignorance. We get ridiculous situations where a leaflet has done very well in testing ? to the extent that respondents have spontaneously commented on the ?nice big type? ? but it is deemed unacceptable because, by regulatory standards, the type is too small. If we then reset the same text in a light, condensed font, tightening up the letterspacing, but making it 2 points ?larger?, then it will be fine! This is treating the whole process of diagnostic testing, and the people who need crucial information about their medicines, with contempt. Rather than just grumbling (though we certainly grumble a lot), we have sought to explain: for example, I took some time to respond in detail, complete with diagrams and examples, to one of their proposals, and David has mentioned his efforts. But regulators apparently don?t want to learn and understand; they simply want to make meaningless rules. They have, ominously, just discovered the term ?leading? ? goodness knows what senseless interpretation they will manage to put on it. The Radio 4 piece which Paul originally mentioned would have been hilarious were it not so scary in its implications. If we?re not careful, we really could find ourselves setting text 2 cm high (is that baseline-to-baseline, or x-height? I think we should be told). Regards Jane _______________________________ Jane Teather JET Documentation Services 54A Ferme Park Road London N4 4ED tel: +44 (0) 20 8348 9213 fax: +44 (0) 20 8374 0342 mobile: +44 (0) 7967 366 252 teather at compuserve.com Fellow of the Communication Research Institute http://www.communication.org.au > _________________ > From waarde at glo.be Fri Apr 4 11:42:01 2008 From: waarde at glo.be (Karel van der Waarde) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 11:42:01 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters reply In-Reply-To: <47F5E462.4050503@compuserve.com> References: <856FAC7F4D054E9BACABFF2503A89687@KatiePC> <47F5E462.4050503@compuserve.com> Message-ID: Dear all, Thanks for the reactions. How can we convince regulators and guideline writers that point sizes are not the most important factor when it comes to understanding texts? Two arguments: - 1 - If all documents would follow the 12 point or 14 point standard, would all these documents really be easier to understand? - 2 - Are all documents that use a smaller typesize more difficult to understand? [Most newspapers, novels, study books, webpages, magazines use a smaller typesize. Should all these be discarded as incomprehensible?] I think that it is necessary to focus on the 'understanding' and 'easy to read' criteria, and not on the pointsizes. The relation between the two is certainly not direct. Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be [One anecdote: The new 'Draft Readability guideline' for medicine leaflets in Europe states that the typesize must be at least 12 points. The text of these leaflets is determined by another law and cannot be made shorter. Following the guideline would therefore mean that the dimensions of these leaflets must increase. This would require larger medicine boxes. Even a small size increase - say 10% - of all boxes would mean that most pharmacies in Europe need to rebuild their shelves, and probably their premises, to store the same number of medicines. Unfortunately, the extra costs for larger paper leaflets and cardboard boxes, new folding machines, new stuffing machines, increased transport costs, and rebuilding storage facilities will be paid by all of us. The price of medicines and health-insurance simply goes up. It is even more unfortunate that the increase in typesize does not help to make medicine leaflets easier to read.] From jk at nqpaofu.com Fri Apr 4 12:24:11 2008 From: jk at nqpaofu.com (Jouke Kleerebezem) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 12:24:11 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: Paul's amusing reference and valid questions about readability regulation [should other factors such as kerning, paper quality, ink (color), font type be included?] of the _material_ text bring me to my question to this list's expert readership, for a current project in which the limit of readability is sought for artistic purpose: a hybrid book/pdf/online publication which aims to benefit of specific media qualities, in the mix. A pdf is zoom-able, a 2pt size text at 400+% reads from a screen and prints well. Web browsers scale text but not images. The book, well, is a book -- no need to again praise its superior intimacy and usability. But it needs a seperate reading device to zoom in it. My question is simple: in your experience, which combination of font, type size, ink color, paper quality gives the most extreme detail in the hands of a skilled off-set printer? Or in another printing technique, provided the result would be 'ink on paper'. Which material qualities would enlarge best under the magnifying glass? Artist James Lee Byars once showed me a 10x10mm piece of paper which had been printed on some Swiss mountain in a dust free room and under other 'perfect' conditions. I forgot how much words it contained but its type size was under 2pt for sure. Then we know about small type engraved rice grains, pin heads etc. I'd be interested in any reference to miniature (text) print and other fabrication/reproduction 'out there'. Like the miniature books exhibition at http://www.indiana.edu/~liblilly/miniatures/index.shtml Today we have the nano bible: http://popsci.typepad.com/popsci/2007/12/nanotech-squeez.html . With reading devices developing parallel to writing technologies, where will practical applications go? Jouke Kleerebezem nomanisanisland at wanadoo.fr -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080404/22b8ee3b/attachment.htm From r.waller at reading.ac.uk Fri Apr 4 12:58:25 2008 From: r.waller at reading.ac.uk (Rob Waller) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 11:58:25 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: <68EA3006-3760-46F7-B1C5-F63C9AA7BFDD@reading.ac.uk> Jouke's post reminds me that what we call 'small print' in the UK, is known as 'fine print' in the USA. There the custom is apparently to print business contracts on Columbia iron presses, using hand-made rag paper, bound in the finest calfskin. Rob Waller -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080404/e69ae505/attachment-0001.htm From carina.andersson at mdh.se Fri Apr 4 13:03:54 2008 From: carina.andersson at mdh.se (Carina Andersson) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 13:03:54 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters reply In-Reply-To: References: <856FAC7F4D054E9BACABFF2503A89687@KatiePC> <47F5E462.4050503@compuserve.com> Message-ID: <80DAB1E7B9936448A084E71CC703AFF226EA81A200@MBXCLUSTER.mdh.local> Dear alla and Karel This discussion seems to be about legibility, readability and "reading value". Does an individual perceive a text, picture or form? Does an individual understand a specific text, picture or form? Does an individual have an interest in the text, picture or form? I see these three concepts as three communicative levels. They are different, but still dependent on each other. You need the first level, legibility, to reach a second level, readability and so on. All the best Carina Andersson PhD-Candidate in Information design School of Innovation, Design and Engineering M?lardalen University Box 325 SE-631 05 Eskilstuna Sweden Phone: +46 (0)16-15 36 89 Cellphone: +46 (0)73- 182 23 19 Fax: +46 (0)16-15 36 50 -----Ursprungligt meddelande----- Fr?n: infodesign-cafe-bounces at list.informationdesign.org [mailto:infodesign-cafe-bounces at list.informationdesign.org] F?r Karel van der Waarde Skickat: den 4 april 2008 11:42 Till: Discussions about information design ?mne: Re: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters reply Dear all, Thanks for the reactions. How can we convince regulators and guideline writers that point sizes are not the most important factor when it comes to understanding texts? Two arguments: - 1 - If all documents would follow the 12 point or 14 point standard, would all these documents really be easier to understand? - 2 - Are all documents that use a smaller typesize more difficult to understand? [Most newspapers, novels, study books, webpages, magazines use a smaller typesize. Should all these be discarded as incomprehensible?] I think that it is necessary to focus on the 'understanding' and 'easy to read' criteria, and not on the pointsizes. The relation between the two is certainly not direct. Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be [One anecdote: The new 'Draft Readability guideline' for medicine leaflets in Europe states that the typesize must be at least 12 points. The text of these leaflets is determined by another law and cannot be made shorter. Following the guideline would therefore mean that the dimensions of these leaflets must increase. This would require larger medicine boxes. Even a small size increase - say 10% - of all boxes would mean that most pharmacies in Europe need to rebuild their shelves, and probably their premises, to store the same number of medicines. Unfortunately, the extra costs for larger paper leaflets and cardboard boxes, new folding machines, new stuffing machines, increased transport costs, and rebuilding storage facilities will be paid by all of us. The price of medicines and health-insurance simply goes up. It is even more unfortunate that the increase in typesize does not help to make medicine leaflets easier to read.] ___________________________________________________________________ Use the following address to post a message to all subscribers: infodesign-cafe at list.informationdesign.org To subscribe, unsubscribe or change your options, visit: http://list.InformationDesign.org/mailman/listinfo/infodesign-cafe For all Information Design matters: http://InformationDesign.org Problems? Write to: InfoDesign-Cafe-Admin at list.InformationDesign.org ___________________________________________________________________ From SWANSONG at ecu.edu Fri Apr 4 14:31:56 2008 From: SWANSONG at ecu.edu (Swanson, Gunnar) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 08:31:56 -0400 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters reply References: <856FAC7F4D054E9BACABFF2503A89687@KatiePC> Message-ID: <556BA53FA6DBA14CBD1605F1735C0FEC76F460@ecufs9.intra.ecu.edu> I've been assuming that this was a discussion of some specific British or European regulatory action regarding some specific variety of text and I don't understand the context so I've stayed out of it. Sweeping statements about the benefits of type size for readability tend to lead to clumsy typesetting that is often more difficult to read than the smaller type it is meant to prevent. ICOGRADA does a monthly poll on its newsletter/website that makes me embarrassed to be a graphic designer. It is consistently inane, misleading, or just plain stupid. It's at http://www.icograda.org/feature/opinion_poll.htm This month's is perhaps the worst.: IS 12 POINT FONT LARGE ENOUGH? This weeks opinion poll comes from Samantha S. Sannella, the President of Design Exchange. Pet Peve: Small Font. I am guilty of it. We are guilty of it. It's in our newsletters, on our business cards and on many of our publications. Is 12 point font large enough? Personally, I type in 18 point font nowadays and change the font size before sending. When did 9, 10 or 11 point font become acceptable? Am I getting old? Actually, I tested my eyes recently and they were perfect, however, the doctor did not test my eye fatigue - which I believe contributes to my recent dislike of miniscule letters. Of course, I have a theory - Go Big or Go Home. Calling all graphic designers: let's go big. What is your take? Is 12 point font large enough? [radio button] I agree with Samantha, 12 point font is just too small! [radio button] I think that font size should be relative to the medium one is working with. [radio button] I think that 12 point font is completely adequate. ---------- I suggest 72 pt Franklin Gothic Demi in black ink on smooth 87% reflectance warm white paper for the following: WTF? It seems, however, that 18 point may be adequate for the following: No, Samantha. I am old. You are stupid. They are not the same. Gunnar ---------- Gunnar Swanson Design Office 1901 East 6th Street Greenville, North Carolina 27858 USA gunnar at gunnarswanson.com +1 252 258 7006 http://www.gunnarswanson.com at East Carolina University: swansong at ecu.edu +1 252 328 2839 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080404/ebb90bef/attachment.htm From katie at raincharm.co.uk Fri Apr 4 15:21:11 2008 From: katie at raincharm.co.uk (Raincharm Communications Limited) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 14:21:11 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: reply to karel and others - size matters Message-ID: <294CEEAA08F045A2971A7B64E7321136@KatiePC> Hi I totally agree with Karel's comment on how it is the readability of the actual content which is the crucial element. It makes no difference how large a font is if the text is complex and poorly written. I also take the point on the ease of making text larger in electronic and digital formats. Despite all the developments in technology and providing information online in a variety of downloadable formats, people still demand print based materials for a lot of documents, particularly government departments launching research findings or new initiatives. I worked on several lengthy documents at the DRC which were supposed to be online only but ended up as expensive print versions. This is without mentioning some of the bilingual print documents which are printed in Welsh and English often running to over 200 pages in some cases. I'd be interested to hear from anyone who is working on easier to read documents. I have several years experience writing and designing Easy Read documents for people with learning disabilities a format which, to my knowledge, has never been applied to the production of patient information leaflets. There is a very real need to design information for the elderly/older people in an easier to read format and patient information leaflets would seem to require this approach. Other audiences who need to be considered are those for whom English is not their first language - migrant workers and asylum seekers/refugees. What information is available in an easier to read format for these people? Happy to share ideas with interested parties. Katie Raincharm Communications Ltd Tel 07971 909007 Registered No. 6267862 VAT No. 913 3364 44 www.raincharm.co.uk -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080404/695f867e/attachment.htm From waarde at glo.be Fri Apr 4 19:29:13 2008 From: waarde at glo.be (Karel van der Waarde) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 19:29:13 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: <31A43BA4-AA08-42C4-B663-B9C5CD61C158@reading.ac.uk> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> <31A43BA4-AA08-42C4-B663-B9C5CD61C158@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: Rob, Thanks for your reply. >I'm not convinced testing is a universal solution - fine for >medicines information perhaps, where a highly regulated product is >marketed over a period of time in a stable format, but many of the >kind of documents this MP is talking about, which include newspaper >advertisements and direct mail, are produced to fast timescales and >may even be in personalised formats. The way the tests are applied to medicines at the moment is far from optimal and probably even detrimental. As Jane Teather mentioned: the results are often ignored or overruled by even more obscure guidelines. >I think it would be useful to explore a risk-based approach. This is >effectively what legal departments in large organisations do when >they assess documents before they go out. For example, in some cases >they approve an abbreviated reference to 'terms and conditions >apply' whereas in other cases they insist the full set is supplied. >About three years ago we surveyed practice among mobile phone >companies and found quite a wide range of strategies. As well as the >two I've mentioned, we also found quite a common practice of >summarising the most important terms of business in larger or bolder >type - but you need some kind of risk assessment to tell you what is >important. This is exactly what patients expect when I discuss alternatives to the current package leaflets, or when test-participants suggest improvements. It would be useful to have a 'creditcard size' card in each medicine box. On the front, it mentions the five or six most important things about a medicine. On the back, it mentions relevant websites, e-mail addresses, phone numbers, patient organizations and government websites. [This is not suitable for all medicines, but would cover approx 80%.] Unfortunately, this is illegal in Europe. The highest risk of poor documents seem to me: - financial costs - wasting energy and materials - wasting time (multiplied by the number of people who read texts) - increasing frustration (= negative fun) I guess that the first two would be of interest to politicians, the first three to companies, and all four to all of us. Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be From d.sless at communication.org.au Tue Apr 1 11:22:43 2008 From: d.sless at communication.org.au (David Sless) Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2008 20:22:43 +1100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: re live testing In-Reply-To: <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> On 27/03/2008, at 9:10 PM, Rob Waller wrote: > It's also worth saying that as time progresses, the need to test > probably gets greater - a few years ago we were mostly designing > bills that had been rather primitive printouts, and the new designs > were always better than the old. Now, the redesign is quite likely > to be of a bill that has already been through the process, but now > needs updating because products or brands have changed. I think this is true. But with a caveat. Our long range monitoring of such documents shows that they deteriorate quite quickly in use, more so these days with the rapid product and branding changes that Rob mentions. In one of our recent published case histories, we found that a document we originally designed in 1988 had a fairly long life, but by 2003 it had deteriorated from its original excellent performance level to a level where only 42% of customers could use it at an acceptable level. The redesign brought the document up to an acceptable level, but within months of implementation we began to see some deterioration of performance. Mocking up alternative designs for testing, though, can be a real chore. Rob described part of the horror in this type of work > we had to format pages of itemised calls, and it was no one's > favourite task. Add to Rob's un-favourite tasks, the task we sometimes get: hand crafting multiple versions of the same document 'just to illustrate' what each variant will look like. Using software like Quark or InDesign to do this type of repetitive task can drive one to madness. Thankfully, some of the newer software used for driving these dynamic document systems allow for rapid modification and prototyping, saving us all from these horrible tasks. David -- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080401/73f9b0e5/attachment-0005.htm From ralexm at terra.com.br Tue Apr 1 17:39:58 2008 From: ralexm at terra.com.br (Ricardo Martins) Date: Tue, 01 Apr 2008 12:39:58 -0300 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: re live testing In-Reply-To: <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> Message-ID: <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080401/d4a1cc4f/attachment-0005.htm From d.sless at communication.org.au Wed Apr 2 00:43:27 2008 From: d.sless at communication.org.au (David Sless) Date: Wed, 2 Apr 2008 09:43:27 +1100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: re live testing In-Reply-To: <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> Message-ID: <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> On 02/04/2008, at 2:39 AM, Ricardo Martins wrote: > Fortunately, in the last versions, Indesign added some nice > resources to integrate dynamic data through simple databases or XML. > You can populate an TXT file with different data and Indesign loads > it and generate different versions of a document. They can be > printed, exported to PDF or imported by other softwares Thanks for that, Ricardo. I will pass that on to our studio and avoid the workers' compensation cases for work induced insanity. We are using the latest indesign and enjoying many of its features, but I hadn't thought of that. It's obviously there with xml. I just hadn't made the connection. David -- blog: www.communication.org.au/dsblog web: http://www.communication.org.au Professor David Sless BA MSc FRSA CEO ? Communication Research Institute ? ? helping people communicate with people ? Mobile: +61 (0)412 356 795 Phone: +61 (0)3 9489 8640 60 Park Street ? Fitzroy North ? Melbourne ? Australia ? 3068 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080402/f5ce55a0/attachment-0005.htm -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: CRI-lh-logo-col.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 1634 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080402/f5ce55a0/attachment-0005.jpg From ralexm at terra.com.br Wed Apr 2 01:14:17 2008 From: ralexm at terra.com.br (Ricardo Martins) Date: Tue, 01 Apr 2008 20:14:17 -0300 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: re live testing In-Reply-To: <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> Message-ID: <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080401/6c3c7736/attachment-0005.htm -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 1634 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080401/6c3c7736/attachment-0005.jpeg From p.stiff at reading.ac.uk Thu Apr 3 18:33:25 2008 From: p.stiff at reading.ac.uk (Paul Stiff) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 17:33:25 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> Message-ID: <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Today (3 April 2008) on BBC Radio 4?s consumer affairs programme, ?You and yours?, there was an item about ?small print?. This was prompted by Labour MP Nick Palmer?s recent proposal in (the UK) parliament of ?a Bill to make requirements regarding the minimum size of print in certain documents, including those relating to advertising and contracts ... The Bill's objective is ... to ensure that customers are reasonably able to read what [the terms and conditions in advertisements or contracts] say? On radio, the ?You and yours? presenter summarized the Bill?s practical proposal, a legal minimum size for the text of contractual offers, T&Cs, etc: ?at least two millimetres high or twelve point font size?. A speaker representing the Royal National Institute for the Blind then supported the proposal; he could read ?standard size print? only with a magnifying glass. He was followed by MP Nick Palmer, who began with a correction: ?a factual point, it?s two centimetres, rather than two millimetres?. A representative of the Direct Marketing Association was later asked by the Y&Y presenter: ?Would the industry be willing to print larger text, two centimetres high?? DMA person: ?Two centimetres is quite ...? [she was going to say ?large?, but was interrupted by:] Y&Y presenter: ?I?m so sorry, twelve point font size?. And there we leave them, all still a bit confused about how to describe the size of this stuff. [You can hear them via ?listen again? at: ] A point [ho-ho] about describing ?type size? on paper: Attempts to regulate this aspect of the appearance of published text can start with a generalized guideline (e.g., ?You should provide large print/Braille versions of all literature, such as menus, instructions, etc? or ?Large enough to be read by a person wearing spectacles?) but eventually they have to define in numeric terms what they mean by ?large? and ?small?. But most readers of this will know that some ?fonts? at ?twelve point size? look smaller than other ?fonts? at ?ten point size?. That is, bigger is sometimes smaller than smaller. And vice versa. This peculiarity is, of course, not confined to regulation and law. It arises any time anyone needs to make an objective description of this simple typographic dimension. It is possible to be objectively precise about size, but the people who would have to implement typographic-appearance regulations through a specification of some kind are often neither scientists nor even printers or designers. So it would probably be unhelpful to define size in terms such as, for example, degrees of visual angle subtended by the viewed object on the viewer?s retina at a given viewing distance. Anyway, people sometimes want to be able to measure ?type size?, in order to check it themselves and make comparisons. But they usually find it hard to do so. And whatever they measure, they often don?t find it easy to locate an equivalent -- to what they measured -- in the dialog box (formatting palette, whatever) of the software application that they use to produce the required ?large? (or ?small?) print. So, is there a solution to this (old) problem? Paul Stiff From brian at brianparkinson.co.uk Thu Apr 3 19:17:05 2008 From: brian at brianparkinson.co.uk (Brian Parkinson) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 18:17:05 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: <9A8A5853-BBF8-4A78-90EE-667C38F2AE45@brianparkinson.co.uk> Good to hear your voice again Paul. How are you? All well here - lots of work at the moment - some of it interesting. Hope to see you before too long Brian From brian at brianparkinson.co.uk Thu Apr 3 19:17:55 2008 From: brian at brianparkinson.co.uk (Brian Parkinson) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 18:17:55 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: This proposal needs to go further I think - readable type has to go hand in hand with clearly written text. If the content is impenetrable legalese, even 20cm lettering won't help people to understand it. Brian Parkinson On 3 Apr 2008, at April 3 5:33 pm, Paul Stiff wrote: > This was prompted by Labour MP Nick Palmer?s recent proposal in (the > UK) parliament of ?a Bill to make requirements regarding the minimum > size of print in certain documents, including those relating to > advertising and contracts ... The Bill's objective is ... to ensure > that customers are reasonably able to read what [the terms and > conditions in advertisements or contracts] say? From waarde at glo.be Thu Apr 3 20:52:31 2008 From: waarde at glo.be (Karel van der Waarde) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 20:52:31 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: Dear Paul, Brian, It remains a pleasant discussion. It might be worth splitting this issue into two: a. Determining if text can be read. I don't think there is any typesize that would 'enable people to read a text'. The typesize on medical package leaflets is frequently 'too small' for patients, but the same patients can read the back of a lottery ticket without any problems ... b. Developing regulations and laws. Some of the information about medicines must be a specific typesize. The EU-readability guideline states that package leaflets must be in a typsize of "8 point Didot". [I've got no idea why they use a Didot-unit, why they specify non-metric measurements, nor where the '8' came from.] But even with a specified typesize, it is very easy to make a text illegible. Just print 8 point text (or 20 point) in a pale yellow on a slightly off-white background and print every second word upside down and in reverse. Even a 'readability formula' wouldn't notice this ... Unfortunately, specifying a typesize in a regulation also means that it must be measurable. It is no good to state '12 point' if nobody is able to check if a printed text is really 12 points ... The only person who can really tell if a text can be read and understood is a reader. [Well trained and experienced designers can make a good guess, but it remains a guess.] I'm convinced that we have to ask a small number of readers to see if our guesses are correct or need to be modified. Technology has developed a little so we can actually provide most information in most sizes - on request. And that solves the regulatory problem as well. Any law in this area must make it obligatory to involve people (non-designers, readers, potential users) in the design process and ask them to use texts. The laws should simply ask for proof that 'a document enables people to act appropriately'. This proof should indicate which people should be enabled, which actions are relevant, and what appropriate levels of success are. If visually impaired people need to act, than the information must be supplied in a format that 'enables a visually impaired person to act appropriately'. Same for people who have difficulties reading English, or difficulties in reading at all. It's a serious shortcoming of the information design community that we have not been able to convince politicians in the last 30 years or so that graphic design literature is not really suitable as a base for legislation. It's a serious shortcoming of politicians that they still base regulations on the production of large quantities of identically printed paper sheets. Digital technology makes it relatively simple to provide information in several formats (large print, small print, sound), on screen and on paper, and in all required languages. It seems that the UK Parliament is again fighting against the wrong symptoms. They did the same in 1848 when they adopted the 'Nuisances removal and contagious diseases prevention act' that was based on the idea that cholera was caused by bad smells. Unfortunately, removing the bad smell did not protect against cholera. Dumping the waste in the Thames actually caused another 15.000 cholera-casualties in 1848 and 1849. In other words, if you look at 'small print' only, it is unlikely any law can 'ensure that customers are reasonably able to read what they say'. Removing 'small type' from all documents does not ensure that people are able to read what they say'. Involving people in the development process and providing information in all required formats might need to be considered. Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be >Today (3 April 2008) on BBC Radio 4?s consumer affairs programme,? >?You and yours?, there was an item about ?small print?. > >This was prompted by Labour MP Nick Palmer?s recent proposal in (the? >UK) parliament of ?a Bill to make requirements regarding the minimum? >size of print in certain documents, including those relating to? >advertising and contracts ... The Bill's objective is ... to ensure? >that customers are reasonably able to read what [the terms and? >conditions in advertisements or contracts] say? > >debtext/80226-0006.htm#08022642000680> > >On radio, the ?You and yours? presenter summarized the Bill?s? >practical proposal, a legal minimum size for the text of contractual? >offers, T&Cs, etc: ?at least two millimetres high or twelve point? >font size?. > >A speaker representing the Royal National Institute for the Blind? >then supported the proposal; he could read ?standard size print? only? >with a magnifying glass. > >He was followed by MP Nick Palmer, who began with a correction: ?a? >factual point, it?s two centimetres, rather than two millimetres?. > >A representative of the Direct Marketing Association was later asked? >by the Y&Y presenter: ?Would the industry be willing to print larger? >text, two centimetres high?? > >DMA person: ?Two centimetres is quite ...? > >[she was going to say ?large?, but was interrupted by:] > >Y&Y presenter: ?I?m so sorry, twelve point font size?. > >And there we leave them, all still a bit confused about how to? >describe the size of this stuff. [You can hear them via ?listen? >again? at: ] > >A point [ho-ho] about describing ?type size? on paper: > >Attempts to regulate this aspect of the appearance of published text? >can start with a generalized guideline (e.g., ?You should provide? >large print/Braille versions of all literature, such as menus,? >instructions, etc? or ?Large enough to be read by a person wearing? >spectacles?) but eventually they have to define in numeric terms what? >they mean by ?large? and ?small?. > >But most readers of this will know that some ?fonts? at ?twelve point? >size? look smaller than other ?fonts? at ?ten point size?. That is,? >bigger is sometimes smaller than smaller. And vice versa. > >This peculiarity is, of course, not confined to regulation and law.? >It arises any time anyone needs to make an objective description of? >this simple typographic dimension. > >It is possible to be objectively precise about size, but the people? >who would have to implement typographic-appearance regulations? >through a specification of some kind are often neither scientists nor? >even printers or designers. So it would probably be unhelpful to? >define size in terms such as, for example, degrees of visual angle? >subtended by the viewed object on the viewer?s retina at a given? >viewing distance. > >Anyway, people sometimes want to be able to measure ?type size?, in? >order to check it themselves and make comparisons. But they usually? >find it hard to do so. And whatever they measure, they often don?t? >find it easy to locate an equivalent -- to what they measured -- in? >the dialog box (formatting palette, whatever) of the software? >application that they use to produce the required ?large? (or? >?small?) print. > >So, is there a solution to this (old) problem? > >Paul Stiff From katie at raincharm.co.uk Thu Apr 3 21:17:26 2008 From: katie at raincharm.co.uk (Raincharm Communications Limited) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 20:17:26 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters reply Message-ID: <856FAC7F4D054E9BACABFF2503A89687@KatiePC> Hi Just read the post relating to the recent Radio 4 debate on font size and what should be set as a standard. As former publications and editorial manager at the Disability Rights Commission (DRC), I was involved in the writing and implementation of an overall publications strategy which included a style guide on font size, typeface and various other accessibility issues. When the DRC began we decided to set 14 point as a standard font size for all documents, excepting those in Easy Read (aimed at people with learning disabilities) which were set at 16 point. It was always quite a struggle convincing other organisations to do the same mainly due to the cost implications - bigger font size meaning more pages and therefore a higher cost. However, once the budget issues are taken out of the equation one is left with the simple fact that a 14 point font size is much clearer and easier to read. I do remember we struggled with maintaining this approach when buying ad space as the cost is so exorbitant in 14 point. Another bone of contention was font size of footnotes in lengthy research documents but we always stuck to our guns and it seemed to pay off! Now working as a consultant advising businesses and other organisations on how to make their information provision more accessible and inclusive, I do still recommend a 14 point font size. Surely it is more important to improve the quality and accessibility of a document for everyone, not only people with impairments but also those who may have low literacy skills or for whom English is not their first language. This approach only ends up benefiting everyone. Equality of opportunity and inclusivity can only be achieved if people commit to what is an exemplary standard ie what goes above and beyond the 'norm'. It is all about setting a precedent for best practice. Once this has been accepted as the standard then others will follow suit. Best Wishes Katie Grant Director Raincharm Communications Ltd Tel 07971 909007 Registered No. 6267862 VAT No. 913 3364 44 www.raincharm.co.uk -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080403/b76d2e33/attachment-0003.htm From conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk Thu Apr 3 22:57:24 2008 From: conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk (Conrad Taylor) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 21:57:24 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: Paul Stiff wrote, sagely and entertainingly: >Attempts to regulate this aspect of the appearance of published text? >can start with a generalized guideline (e.g., ?You should provide? >large print/Braille versions of all literature, such as menus,? >instructions, etc? or ?Large enough to be read by a person wearing? >spectacles?) but eventually they have to define in numeric terms what? >they mean by ?large? and ?small?. > >But most readers of this will know that some ?fonts? at ?twelve point? >size? look smaller than other ?fonts? at ?ten point size?. That is, >bigger is sometimes smaller than smaller. And vice versa. Since 12pt in one font may be either larger or smaller, more or less legible than 12pt in another font, the obvious answer for the unimaginative and unskilled legislator is to define not only the size, but the font itself. In the British context, I am sure this New Labour government would be very happy to define the specifications as Arial 14pt. They bow to Microsoft in much else, so why not this? This would cap Microsoft's success in getting approval from an exhausted international standards community for their OfficeOpen XML "standard". :-) Conrad -- From d.sless at communication.org.au Fri Apr 4 05:17:44 2008 From: d.sless at communication.org.au (David Sless) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 14:17:44 +1100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: Hi All, To underline and elaborate what Karel has said on this subject. The problem regulators face, put simply, is they don't have the necessary understanding of ID to come up with sensible regulation of information. This is made worse by that the fact (as Donald Rumsfeld might have put it) they don't know they don't know. At CRI we have been working on this problem for some time, with mixed success. You can see some of our efforts on this in our publications, and, as Karel knows because he has done a lot of work on it, we are working on something at the moment that will push the case for better training of regulators a bit further. But it is hard and largely unrewarding work. Most EU regulators with whom I have engaged on this subject regard me as 'unhelpful' and some refuse to attend conferences, if I am a speaker (mind you, I feel like that myself sometimes). The basic shift that needs to occur is from regulating content to regulating performance Put differently it's a matter of looking at ends rather than means. The end is readable text. As we all agree, regulating font size is a poor means of getting to that particular outcome. I could go on but? David -- blog: www.communication.org.au/dsblog web: http://www.communication.org.au -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080404/167a1d69/attachment-0003.htm From r.waller at reading.ac.uk Fri Apr 4 10:07:17 2008 From: r.waller at reading.ac.uk (Rob Waller) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 09:07:17 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: <31A43BA4-AA08-42C4-B663-B9C5CD61C158@reading.ac.uk> Can I add a couple of thoughts to the debate? There is undoubtedly a big problem of naive information design becoming enshrined in the law, and there are plenty of historical and current examples of this. However, as a profession we do need to respond to the kind of concerns the politicians are expressing. As an aside I don't believe the fact that 12pt is a vague definition is a big problem in practice - even 12pt Bembo would be more legible than what we get now. More to the point is that to print most terms of business in 12pt of any typeface would lead to acres of paper, and, as others have suggested, would not ensure they are read. Indeed customer research often shows people are intimidated by long documents, even when clearly written. I'm not convinced testing is a universal solution - fine for medicines information perhaps, where a highly regulated product is marketed over a period of time in a stable format, but many of the kind of documents this MP is talking about, which include newspaper advertisements and direct mail, are produced to fast timescales and may even be in personalised formats. I think it would be useful to explore a risk-based approach. This is effectively what legal departments in large organisations do when they assess documents before they go out. For example, in some cases they approve an abbreviated reference to 'terms and conditions apply' whereas in other cases they insist the full set is supplied. About three years ago we surveyed practice among mobile phone companies and found quite a wide range of strategies. As well as the two I've mentioned, we also found quite a common practice of summarising the most important terms of business in larger or bolder type - but you need some kind of risk assessment to tell you what is important. A risk-based approach means assessing each item and coming to a view about (a) the likelihood of it being misunderstood, (b) the likelihood of the eventuality it caters for actually happening, and (c) the potential damage to the customer (or indeed to the company's relationship with the customer, and its reputation) if it is misunderstood and the eventuality happens. The risk assessment process could be tested with customers, even if every document cannot be. An example of a low risk item might be the part of the contract that states that if the company is sold to another company, the contract will be transferred to the buyer without changes. Not an everyday occurrence, and not one that would bother most people so long as the service continues without material changes. A high risk item might be the penalties for early release from a contract, or how complaints are handled. Most of us would not mind, and would not be penalised for our laziness, if the very low risk items were in 5pt, or for that matter printed on a banana and fired into space. So long as the high risk items were prominent, legible and designed to be taken seriously. An anecdotal example of this is my own claim under insurance that I was sold by my water supplier to cover problems with drains. It turned out (deep in the small print) that if my drain went under someone else's land to reach the main sewer I was not covered. Yet this is the most common arrangement in the newly built town where I live. So almost no one here can actually claim under this policy. A risk assessment of this clause would have told them there is a very high risk of this eventuality, that it threatens the whole point of the policy, and therefore there is highly likely to be damage to the customer relationship. And to make sure it does damage their reputation in some small way, I will mention that the company is Anglian Water and the 'cover' is provided for them by Homeserve. Rob Waller -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080404/5337615e/attachment-0002.htm From teather at compuserve.com Fri Apr 4 10:18:42 2008 From: teather at compuserve.com (Jane Teather) Date: Fri, 04 Apr 2008 09:18:42 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters reply In-Reply-To: <856FAC7F4D054E9BACABFF2503A89687@KatiePC> References: <856FAC7F4D054E9BACABFF2503A89687@KatiePC> Message-ID: <47F5E462.4050503@compuserve.com> Just adding my voice to those of Karel and David ? this is immensely frustrating for those of us who work on information about medicines and healthcare. As we know, size in points is a very inexact predictor of actual type size, and there?s a huge amount more to legibility than just size. But regulators are ever keen to impose over-simplistic rules, even when these are based on ignorance. We get ridiculous situations where a leaflet has done very well in testing ? to the extent that respondents have spontaneously commented on the ?nice big type? ? but it is deemed unacceptable because, by regulatory standards, the type is too small. If we then reset the same text in a light, condensed font, tightening up the letterspacing, but making it 2 points ?larger?, then it will be fine! This is treating the whole process of diagnostic testing, and the people who need crucial information about their medicines, with contempt. Rather than just grumbling (though we certainly grumble a lot), we have sought to explain: for example, I took some time to respond in detail, complete with diagrams and examples, to one of their proposals, and David has mentioned his efforts. But regulators apparently don?t want to learn and understand; they simply want to make meaningless rules. They have, ominously, just discovered the term ?leading? ? goodness knows what senseless interpretation they will manage to put on it. The Radio 4 piece which Paul originally mentioned would have been hilarious were it not so scary in its implications. If we?re not careful, we really could find ourselves setting text 2 cm high (is that baseline-to-baseline, or x-height? I think we should be told). Regards Jane _______________________________ Jane Teather JET Documentation Services 54A Ferme Park Road London N4 4ED tel: +44 (0) 20 8348 9213 fax: +44 (0) 20 8374 0342 mobile: +44 (0) 7967 366 252 teather at compuserve.com Fellow of the Communication Research Institute http://www.communication.org.au > _________________ > From waarde at glo.be Fri Apr 4 11:42:01 2008 From: waarde at glo.be (Karel van der Waarde) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 11:42:01 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters reply In-Reply-To: <47F5E462.4050503@compuserve.com> References: <856FAC7F4D054E9BACABFF2503A89687@KatiePC> <47F5E462.4050503@compuserve.com> Message-ID: Dear all, Thanks for the reactions. How can we convince regulators and guideline writers that point sizes are not the most important factor when it comes to understanding texts? Two arguments: - 1 - If all documents would follow the 12 point or 14 point standard, would all these documents really be easier to understand? - 2 - Are all documents that use a smaller typesize more difficult to understand? [Most newspapers, novels, study books, webpages, magazines use a smaller typesize. Should all these be discarded as incomprehensible?] I think that it is necessary to focus on the 'understanding' and 'easy to read' criteria, and not on the pointsizes. The relation between the two is certainly not direct. Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be [One anecdote: The new 'Draft Readability guideline' for medicine leaflets in Europe states that the typesize must be at least 12 points. The text of these leaflets is determined by another law and cannot be made shorter. Following the guideline would therefore mean that the dimensions of these leaflets must increase. This would require larger medicine boxes. Even a small size increase - say 10% - of all boxes would mean that most pharmacies in Europe need to rebuild their shelves, and probably their premises, to store the same number of medicines. Unfortunately, the extra costs for larger paper leaflets and cardboard boxes, new folding machines, new stuffing machines, increased transport costs, and rebuilding storage facilities will be paid by all of us. The price of medicines and health-insurance simply goes up. It is even more unfortunate that the increase in typesize does not help to make medicine leaflets easier to read.] From jk at nqpaofu.com Fri Apr 4 12:24:11 2008 From: jk at nqpaofu.com (Jouke Kleerebezem) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 12:24:11 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: Paul's amusing reference and valid questions about readability regulation [should other factors such as kerning, paper quality, ink (color), font type be included?] of the _material_ text bring me to my question to this list's expert readership, for a current project in which the limit of readability is sought for artistic purpose: a hybrid book/pdf/online publication which aims to benefit of specific media qualities, in the mix. A pdf is zoom-able, a 2pt size text at 400+% reads from a screen and prints well. Web browsers scale text but not images. The book, well, is a book -- no need to again praise its superior intimacy and usability. But it needs a seperate reading device to zoom in it. My question is simple: in your experience, which combination of font, type size, ink color, paper quality gives the most extreme detail in the hands of a skilled off-set printer? Or in another printing technique, provided the result would be 'ink on paper'. Which material qualities would enlarge best under the magnifying glass? Artist James Lee Byars once showed me a 10x10mm piece of paper which had been printed on some Swiss mountain in a dust free room and under other 'perfect' conditions. I forgot how much words it contained but its type size was under 2pt for sure. Then we know about small type engraved rice grains, pin heads etc. I'd be interested in any reference to miniature (text) print and other fabrication/reproduction 'out there'. Like the miniature books exhibition at http://www.indiana.edu/~liblilly/miniatures/index.shtml Today we have the nano bible: http://popsci.typepad.com/popsci/2007/12/nanotech-squeez.html . With reading devices developing parallel to writing technologies, where will practical applications go? Jouke Kleerebezem nomanisanisland at wanadoo.fr -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080404/22b8ee3b/attachment-0002.htm From r.waller at reading.ac.uk Fri Apr 4 12:58:25 2008 From: r.waller at reading.ac.uk (Rob Waller) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 11:58:25 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: <68EA3006-3760-46F7-B1C5-F63C9AA7BFDD@reading.ac.uk> Jouke's post reminds me that what we call 'small print' in the UK, is known as 'fine print' in the USA. There the custom is apparently to print business contracts on Columbia iron presses, using hand-made rag paper, bound in the finest calfskin. Rob Waller -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080404/e69ae505/attachment-0002.htm From carina.andersson at mdh.se Fri Apr 4 13:03:54 2008 From: carina.andersson at mdh.se (Carina Andersson) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 13:03:54 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters reply In-Reply-To: References: <856FAC7F4D054E9BACABFF2503A89687@KatiePC> <47F5E462.4050503@compuserve.com> Message-ID: <80DAB1E7B9936448A084E71CC703AFF226EA81A200@MBXCLUSTER.mdh.local> Dear alla and Karel This discussion seems to be about legibility, readability and "reading value". Does an individual perceive a text, picture or form? Does an individual understand a specific text, picture or form? Does an individual have an interest in the text, picture or form? I see these three concepts as three communicative levels. They are different, but still dependent on each other. You need the first level, legibility, to reach a second level, readability and so on. All the best Carina Andersson PhD-Candidate in Information design School of Innovation, Design and Engineering M?lardalen University Box 325 SE-631 05 Eskilstuna Sweden Phone: +46 (0)16-15 36 89 Cellphone: +46 (0)73- 182 23 19 Fax: +46 (0)16-15 36 50 -----Ursprungligt meddelande----- Fr?n: infodesign-cafe-bounces at list.informationdesign.org [mailto:infodesign-cafe-bounces at list.informationdesign.org] F?r Karel van der Waarde Skickat: den 4 april 2008 11:42 Till: Discussions about information design ?mne: Re: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters reply Dear all, Thanks for the reactions. How can we convince regulators and guideline writers that point sizes are not the most important factor when it comes to understanding texts? Two arguments: - 1 - If all documents would follow the 12 point or 14 point standard, would all these documents really be easier to understand? - 2 - Are all documents that use a smaller typesize more difficult to understand? [Most newspapers, novels, study books, webpages, magazines use a smaller typesize. Should all these be discarded as incomprehensible?] I think that it is necessary to focus on the 'understanding' and 'easy to read' criteria, and not on the pointsizes. The relation between the two is certainly not direct. Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be [One anecdote: The new 'Draft Readability guideline' for medicine leaflets in Europe states that the typesize must be at least 12 points. The text of these leaflets is determined by another law and cannot be made shorter. Following the guideline would therefore mean that the dimensions of these leaflets must increase. This would require larger medicine boxes. Even a small size increase - say 10% - of all boxes would mean that most pharmacies in Europe need to rebuild their shelves, and probably their premises, to store the same number of medicines. Unfortunately, the extra costs for larger paper leaflets and cardboard boxes, new folding machines, new stuffing machines, increased transport costs, and rebuilding storage facilities will be paid by all of us. The price of medicines and health-insurance simply goes up. It is even more unfortunate that the increase in typesize does not help to make medicine leaflets easier to read.] ___________________________________________________________________ Use the following address to post a message to all subscribers: infodesign-cafe at list.informationdesign.org To subscribe, unsubscribe or change your options, visit: http://list.InformationDesign.org/mailman/listinfo/infodesign-cafe For all Information Design matters: http://InformationDesign.org Problems? Write to: InfoDesign-Cafe-Admin at list.InformationDesign.org ___________________________________________________________________ From SWANSONG at ecu.edu Fri Apr 4 14:31:56 2008 From: SWANSONG at ecu.edu (Swanson, Gunnar) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 08:31:56 -0400 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters reply References: <856FAC7F4D054E9BACABFF2503A89687@KatiePC> Message-ID: <556BA53FA6DBA14CBD1605F1735C0FEC76F460@ecufs9.intra.ecu.edu> I've been assuming that this was a discussion of some specific British or European regulatory action regarding some specific variety of text and I don't understand the context so I've stayed out of it. Sweeping statements about the benefits of type size for readability tend to lead to clumsy typesetting that is often more difficult to read than the smaller type it is meant to prevent. ICOGRADA does a monthly poll on its newsletter/website that makes me embarrassed to be a graphic designer. It is consistently inane, misleading, or just plain stupid. It's at http://www.icograda.org/feature/opinion_poll.htm This month's is perhaps the worst.: IS 12 POINT FONT LARGE ENOUGH? This weeks opinion poll comes from Samantha S. Sannella, the President of Design Exchange. Pet Peve: Small Font. I am guilty of it. We are guilty of it. It's in our newsletters, on our business cards and on many of our publications. Is 12 point font large enough? Personally, I type in 18 point font nowadays and change the font size before sending. When did 9, 10 or 11 point font become acceptable? Am I getting old? Actually, I tested my eyes recently and they were perfect, however, the doctor did not test my eye fatigue - which I believe contributes to my recent dislike of miniscule letters. Of course, I have a theory - Go Big or Go Home. Calling all graphic designers: let's go big. What is your take? Is 12 point font large enough? [radio button] I agree with Samantha, 12 point font is just too small! [radio button] I think that font size should be relative to the medium one is working with. [radio button] I think that 12 point font is completely adequate. ---------- I suggest 72 pt Franklin Gothic Demi in black ink on smooth 87% reflectance warm white paper for the following: WTF? It seems, however, that 18 point may be adequate for the following: No, Samantha. I am old. You are stupid. They are not the same. Gunnar ---------- Gunnar Swanson Design Office 1901 East 6th Street Greenville, North Carolina 27858 USA gunnar at gunnarswanson.com +1 252 258 7006 http://www.gunnarswanson.com at East Carolina University: swansong at ecu.edu +1 252 328 2839 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080404/ebb90bef/attachment-0001.htm From katie at raincharm.co.uk Fri Apr 4 15:21:11 2008 From: katie at raincharm.co.uk (Raincharm Communications Limited) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 14:21:11 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: reply to karel and others - size matters Message-ID: <294CEEAA08F045A2971A7B64E7321136@KatiePC> Hi I totally agree with Karel's comment on how it is the readability of the actual content which is the crucial element. It makes no difference how large a font is if the text is complex and poorly written. I also take the point on the ease of making text larger in electronic and digital formats. Despite all the developments in technology and providing information online in a variety of downloadable formats, people still demand print based materials for a lot of documents, particularly government departments launching research findings or new initiatives. I worked on several lengthy documents at the DRC which were supposed to be online only but ended up as expensive print versions. This is without mentioning some of the bilingual print documents which are printed in Welsh and English often running to over 200 pages in some cases. I'd be interested to hear from anyone who is working on easier to read documents. I have several years experience writing and designing Easy Read documents for people with learning disabilities a format which, to my knowledge, has never been applied to the production of patient information leaflets. There is a very real need to design information for the elderly/older people in an easier to read format and patient information leaflets would seem to require this approach. Other audiences who need to be considered are those for whom English is not their first language - migrant workers and asylum seekers/refugees. What information is available in an easier to read format for these people? Happy to share ideas with interested parties. Katie Raincharm Communications Ltd Tel 07971 909007 Registered No. 6267862 VAT No. 913 3364 44 www.raincharm.co.uk -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080404/695f867e/attachment-0001.htm From waarde at glo.be Fri Apr 4 19:29:13 2008 From: waarde at glo.be (Karel van der Waarde) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 19:29:13 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: <31A43BA4-AA08-42C4-B663-B9C5CD61C158@reading.ac.uk> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> <31A43BA4-AA08-42C4-B663-B9C5CD61C158@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: Rob, Thanks for your reply. >I'm not convinced testing is a universal solution - fine for >medicines information perhaps, where a highly regulated product is >marketed over a period of time in a stable format, but many of the >kind of documents this MP is talking about, which include newspaper >advertisements and direct mail, are produced to fast timescales and >may even be in personalised formats. The way the tests are applied to medicines at the moment is far from optimal and probably even detrimental. As Jane Teather mentioned: the results are often ignored or overruled by even more obscure guidelines. >I think it would be useful to explore a risk-based approach. This is >effectively what legal departments in large organisations do when >they assess documents before they go out. For example, in some cases >they approve an abbreviated reference to 'terms and conditions >apply' whereas in other cases they insist the full set is supplied. >About three years ago we surveyed practice among mobile phone >companies and found quite a wide range of strategies. As well as the >two I've mentioned, we also found quite a common practice of >summarising the most important terms of business in larger or bolder >type - but you need some kind of risk assessment to tell you what is >important. This is exactly what patients expect when I discuss alternatives to the current package leaflets, or when test-participants suggest improvements. It would be useful to have a 'creditcard size' card in each medicine box. On the front, it mentions the five or six most important things about a medicine. On the back, it mentions relevant websites, e-mail addresses, phone numbers, patient organizations and government websites. [This is not suitable for all medicines, but would cover approx 80%.] Unfortunately, this is illegal in Europe. The highest risk of poor documents seem to me: - financial costs - wasting energy and materials - wasting time (multiplied by the number of people who read texts) - increasing frustration (= negative fun) I guess that the first two would be of interest to politicians, the first three to companies, and all four to all of us. Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be From d.sless at communication.org.au Tue Apr 1 11:22:43 2008 From: d.sless at communication.org.au (David Sless) Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2008 20:22:43 +1100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: re live testing In-Reply-To: <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> On 27/03/2008, at 9:10 PM, Rob Waller wrote: > It's also worth saying that as time progresses, the need to test > probably gets greater - a few years ago we were mostly designing > bills that had been rather primitive printouts, and the new designs > were always better than the old. Now, the redesign is quite likely > to be of a bill that has already been through the process, but now > needs updating because products or brands have changed. I think this is true. But with a caveat. Our long range monitoring of such documents shows that they deteriorate quite quickly in use, more so these days with the rapid product and branding changes that Rob mentions. In one of our recent published case histories, we found that a document we originally designed in 1988 had a fairly long life, but by 2003 it had deteriorated from its original excellent performance level to a level where only 42% of customers could use it at an acceptable level. The redesign brought the document up to an acceptable level, but within months of implementation we began to see some deterioration of performance. Mocking up alternative designs for testing, though, can be a real chore. Rob described part of the horror in this type of work > we had to format pages of itemised calls, and it was no one's > favourite task. Add to Rob's un-favourite tasks, the task we sometimes get: hand crafting multiple versions of the same document 'just to illustrate' what each variant will look like. Using software like Quark or InDesign to do this type of repetitive task can drive one to madness. Thankfully, some of the newer software used for driving these dynamic document systems allow for rapid modification and prototyping, saving us all from these horrible tasks. David -- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080401/73f9b0e5/attachment-0006.htm From ralexm at terra.com.br Tue Apr 1 17:39:58 2008 From: ralexm at terra.com.br (Ricardo Martins) Date: Tue, 01 Apr 2008 12:39:58 -0300 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: re live testing In-Reply-To: <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> Message-ID: <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080401/d4a1cc4f/attachment-0006.htm From d.sless at communication.org.au Wed Apr 2 00:43:27 2008 From: d.sless at communication.org.au (David Sless) Date: Wed, 2 Apr 2008 09:43:27 +1100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: re live testing In-Reply-To: <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> Message-ID: <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> On 02/04/2008, at 2:39 AM, Ricardo Martins wrote: > Fortunately, in the last versions, Indesign added some nice > resources to integrate dynamic data through simple databases or XML. > You can populate an TXT file with different data and Indesign loads > it and generate different versions of a document. They can be > printed, exported to PDF or imported by other softwares Thanks for that, Ricardo. I will pass that on to our studio and avoid the workers' compensation cases for work induced insanity. We are using the latest indesign and enjoying many of its features, but I hadn't thought of that. It's obviously there with xml. I just hadn't made the connection. David -- blog: www.communication.org.au/dsblog web: http://www.communication.org.au Professor David Sless BA MSc FRSA CEO ? Communication Research Institute ? ? helping people communicate with people ? Mobile: +61 (0)412 356 795 Phone: +61 (0)3 9489 8640 60 Park Street ? Fitzroy North ? Melbourne ? Australia ? 3068 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080402/f5ce55a0/attachment-0006.htm -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: CRI-lh-logo-col.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 1634 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080402/f5ce55a0/attachment-0006.jpg From ralexm at terra.com.br Wed Apr 2 01:14:17 2008 From: ralexm at terra.com.br (Ricardo Martins) Date: Tue, 01 Apr 2008 20:14:17 -0300 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: re live testing In-Reply-To: <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> Message-ID: <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080401/6c3c7736/attachment-0006.htm -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 1634 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080401/6c3c7736/attachment-0006.jpeg From p.stiff at reading.ac.uk Thu Apr 3 18:33:25 2008 From: p.stiff at reading.ac.uk (Paul Stiff) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 17:33:25 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> Message-ID: <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Today (3 April 2008) on BBC Radio 4?s consumer affairs programme, ?You and yours?, there was an item about ?small print?. This was prompted by Labour MP Nick Palmer?s recent proposal in (the UK) parliament of ?a Bill to make requirements regarding the minimum size of print in certain documents, including those relating to advertising and contracts ... The Bill's objective is ... to ensure that customers are reasonably able to read what [the terms and conditions in advertisements or contracts] say? On radio, the ?You and yours? presenter summarized the Bill?s practical proposal, a legal minimum size for the text of contractual offers, T&Cs, etc: ?at least two millimetres high or twelve point font size?. A speaker representing the Royal National Institute for the Blind then supported the proposal; he could read ?standard size print? only with a magnifying glass. He was followed by MP Nick Palmer, who began with a correction: ?a factual point, it?s two centimetres, rather than two millimetres?. A representative of the Direct Marketing Association was later asked by the Y&Y presenter: ?Would the industry be willing to print larger text, two centimetres high?? DMA person: ?Two centimetres is quite ...? [she was going to say ?large?, but was interrupted by:] Y&Y presenter: ?I?m so sorry, twelve point font size?. And there we leave them, all still a bit confused about how to describe the size of this stuff. [You can hear them via ?listen again? at: ] A point [ho-ho] about describing ?type size? on paper: Attempts to regulate this aspect of the appearance of published text can start with a generalized guideline (e.g., ?You should provide large print/Braille versions of all literature, such as menus, instructions, etc? or ?Large enough to be read by a person wearing spectacles?) but eventually they have to define in numeric terms what they mean by ?large? and ?small?. But most readers of this will know that some ?fonts? at ?twelve point size? look smaller than other ?fonts? at ?ten point size?. That is, bigger is sometimes smaller than smaller. And vice versa. This peculiarity is, of course, not confined to regulation and law. It arises any time anyone needs to make an objective description of this simple typographic dimension. It is possible to be objectively precise about size, but the people who would have to implement typographic-appearance regulations through a specification of some kind are often neither scientists nor even printers or designers. So it would probably be unhelpful to define size in terms such as, for example, degrees of visual angle subtended by the viewed object on the viewer?s retina at a given viewing distance. Anyway, people sometimes want to be able to measure ?type size?, in order to check it themselves and make comparisons. But they usually find it hard to do so. And whatever they measure, they often don?t find it easy to locate an equivalent -- to what they measured -- in the dialog box (formatting palette, whatever) of the software application that they use to produce the required ?large? (or ?small?) print. So, is there a solution to this (old) problem? Paul Stiff From brian at brianparkinson.co.uk Thu Apr 3 19:17:05 2008 From: brian at brianparkinson.co.uk (Brian Parkinson) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 18:17:05 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: <9A8A5853-BBF8-4A78-90EE-667C38F2AE45@brianparkinson.co.uk> Good to hear your voice again Paul. How are you? All well here - lots of work at the moment - some of it interesting. Hope to see you before too long Brian From brian at brianparkinson.co.uk Thu Apr 3 19:17:55 2008 From: brian at brianparkinson.co.uk (Brian Parkinson) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 18:17:55 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: This proposal needs to go further I think - readable type has to go hand in hand with clearly written text. If the content is impenetrable legalese, even 20cm lettering won't help people to understand it. Brian Parkinson On 3 Apr 2008, at April 3 5:33 pm, Paul Stiff wrote: > This was prompted by Labour MP Nick Palmer?s recent proposal in (the > UK) parliament of ?a Bill to make requirements regarding the minimum > size of print in certain documents, including those relating to > advertising and contracts ... The Bill's objective is ... to ensure > that customers are reasonably able to read what [the terms and > conditions in advertisements or contracts] say? From waarde at glo.be Thu Apr 3 20:52:31 2008 From: waarde at glo.be (Karel van der Waarde) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 20:52:31 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: Dear Paul, Brian, It remains a pleasant discussion. It might be worth splitting this issue into two: a. Determining if text can be read. I don't think there is any typesize that would 'enable people to read a text'. The typesize on medical package leaflets is frequently 'too small' for patients, but the same patients can read the back of a lottery ticket without any problems ... b. Developing regulations and laws. Some of the information about medicines must be a specific typesize. The EU-readability guideline states that package leaflets must be in a typsize of "8 point Didot". [I've got no idea why they use a Didot-unit, why they specify non-metric measurements, nor where the '8' came from.] But even with a specified typesize, it is very easy to make a text illegible. Just print 8 point text (or 20 point) in a pale yellow on a slightly off-white background and print every second word upside down and in reverse. Even a 'readability formula' wouldn't notice this ... Unfortunately, specifying a typesize in a regulation also means that it must be measurable. It is no good to state '12 point' if nobody is able to check if a printed text is really 12 points ... The only person who can really tell if a text can be read and understood is a reader. [Well trained and experienced designers can make a good guess, but it remains a guess.] I'm convinced that we have to ask a small number of readers to see if our guesses are correct or need to be modified. Technology has developed a little so we can actually provide most information in most sizes - on request. And that solves the regulatory problem as well. Any law in this area must make it obligatory to involve people (non-designers, readers, potential users) in the design process and ask them to use texts. The laws should simply ask for proof that 'a document enables people to act appropriately'. This proof should indicate which people should be enabled, which actions are relevant, and what appropriate levels of success are. If visually impaired people need to act, than the information must be supplied in a format that 'enables a visually impaired person to act appropriately'. Same for people who have difficulties reading English, or difficulties in reading at all. It's a serious shortcoming of the information design community that we have not been able to convince politicians in the last 30 years or so that graphic design literature is not really suitable as a base for legislation. It's a serious shortcoming of politicians that they still base regulations on the production of large quantities of identically printed paper sheets. Digital technology makes it relatively simple to provide information in several formats (large print, small print, sound), on screen and on paper, and in all required languages. It seems that the UK Parliament is again fighting against the wrong symptoms. They did the same in 1848 when they adopted the 'Nuisances removal and contagious diseases prevention act' that was based on the idea that cholera was caused by bad smells. Unfortunately, removing the bad smell did not protect against cholera. Dumping the waste in the Thames actually caused another 15.000 cholera-casualties in 1848 and 1849. In other words, if you look at 'small print' only, it is unlikely any law can 'ensure that customers are reasonably able to read what they say'. Removing 'small type' from all documents does not ensure that people are able to read what they say'. Involving people in the development process and providing information in all required formats might need to be considered. Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be >Today (3 April 2008) on BBC Radio 4?s consumer affairs programme,? >?You and yours?, there was an item about ?small print?. > >This was prompted by Labour MP Nick Palmer?s recent proposal in (the? >UK) parliament of ?a Bill to make requirements regarding the minimum? >size of print in certain documents, including those relating to? >advertising and contracts ... The Bill's objective is ... to ensure? >that customers are reasonably able to read what [the terms and? >conditions in advertisements or contracts] say? > >debtext/80226-0006.htm#08022642000680> > >On radio, the ?You and yours? presenter summarized the Bill?s? >practical proposal, a legal minimum size for the text of contractual? >offers, T&Cs, etc: ?at least two millimetres high or twelve point? >font size?. > >A speaker representing the Royal National Institute for the Blind? >then supported the proposal; he could read ?standard size print? only? >with a magnifying glass. > >He was followed by MP Nick Palmer, who began with a correction: ?a? >factual point, it?s two centimetres, rather than two millimetres?. > >A representative of the Direct Marketing Association was later asked? >by the Y&Y presenter: ?Would the industry be willing to print larger? >text, two centimetres high?? > >DMA person: ?Two centimetres is quite ...? > >[she was going to say ?large?, but was interrupted by:] > >Y&Y presenter: ?I?m so sorry, twelve point font size?. > >And there we leave them, all still a bit confused about how to? >describe the size of this stuff. [You can hear them via ?listen? >again? at: ] > >A point [ho-ho] about describing ?type size? on paper: > >Attempts to regulate this aspect of the appearance of published text? >can start with a generalized guideline (e.g., ?You should provide? >large print/Braille versions of all literature, such as menus,? >instructions, etc? or ?Large enough to be read by a person wearing? >spectacles?) but eventually they have to define in numeric terms what? >they mean by ?large? and ?small?. > >But most readers of this will know that some ?fonts? at ?twelve point? >size? look smaller than other ?fonts? at ?ten point size?. That is,? >bigger is sometimes smaller than smaller. And vice versa. > >This peculiarity is, of course, not confined to regulation and law.? >It arises any time anyone needs to make an objective description of? >this simple typographic dimension. > >It is possible to be objectively precise about size, but the people? >who would have to implement typographic-appearance regulations? >through a specification of some kind are often neither scientists nor? >even printers or designers. So it would probably be unhelpful to? >define size in terms such as, for example, degrees of visual angle? >subtended by the viewed object on the viewer?s retina at a given? >viewing distance. > >Anyway, people sometimes want to be able to measure ?type size?, in? >order to check it themselves and make comparisons. But they usually? >find it hard to do so. And whatever they measure, they often don?t? >find it easy to locate an equivalent -- to what they measured -- in? >the dialog box (formatting palette, whatever) of the software? >application that they use to produce the required ?large? (or? >?small?) print. > >So, is there a solution to this (old) problem? > >Paul Stiff From katie at raincharm.co.uk Thu Apr 3 21:17:26 2008 From: katie at raincharm.co.uk (Raincharm Communications Limited) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 20:17:26 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters reply Message-ID: <856FAC7F4D054E9BACABFF2503A89687@KatiePC> Hi Just read the post relating to the recent Radio 4 debate on font size and what should be set as a standard. As former publications and editorial manager at the Disability Rights Commission (DRC), I was involved in the writing and implementation of an overall publications strategy which included a style guide on font size, typeface and various other accessibility issues. When the DRC began we decided to set 14 point as a standard font size for all documents, excepting those in Easy Read (aimed at people with learning disabilities) which were set at 16 point. It was always quite a struggle convincing other organisations to do the same mainly due to the cost implications - bigger font size meaning more pages and therefore a higher cost. However, once the budget issues are taken out of the equation one is left with the simple fact that a 14 point font size is much clearer and easier to read. I do remember we struggled with maintaining this approach when buying ad space as the cost is so exorbitant in 14 point. Another bone of contention was font size of footnotes in lengthy research documents but we always stuck to our guns and it seemed to pay off! Now working as a consultant advising businesses and other organisations on how to make their information provision more accessible and inclusive, I do still recommend a 14 point font size. Surely it is more important to improve the quality and accessibility of a document for everyone, not only people with impairments but also those who may have low literacy skills or for whom English is not their first language. This approach only ends up benefiting everyone. Equality of opportunity and inclusivity can only be achieved if people commit to what is an exemplary standard ie what goes above and beyond the 'norm'. It is all about setting a precedent for best practice. Once this has been accepted as the standard then others will follow suit. Best Wishes Katie Grant Director Raincharm Communications Ltd Tel 07971 909007 Registered No. 6267862 VAT No. 913 3364 44 www.raincharm.co.uk -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080403/b76d2e33/attachment-0004.htm From conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk Thu Apr 3 22:57:24 2008 From: conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk (Conrad Taylor) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 21:57:24 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: Paul Stiff wrote, sagely and entertainingly: >Attempts to regulate this aspect of the appearance of published text? >can start with a generalized guideline (e.g., ?You should provide? >large print/Braille versions of all literature, such as menus,? >instructions, etc? or ?Large enough to be read by a person wearing? >spectacles?) but eventually they have to define in numeric terms what? >they mean by ?large? and ?small?. > >But most readers of this will know that some ?fonts? at ?twelve point? >size? look smaller than other ?fonts? at ?ten point size?. That is, >bigger is sometimes smaller than smaller. And vice versa. Since 12pt in one font may be either larger or smaller, more or less legible than 12pt in another font, the obvious answer for the unimaginative and unskilled legislator is to define not only the size, but the font itself. In the British context, I am sure this New Labour government would be very happy to define the specifications as Arial 14pt. They bow to Microsoft in much else, so why not this? This would cap Microsoft's success in getting approval from an exhausted international standards community for their OfficeOpen XML "standard". :-) Conrad -- From d.sless at communication.org.au Fri Apr 4 05:17:44 2008 From: d.sless at communication.org.au (David Sless) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 14:17:44 +1100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: Hi All, To underline and elaborate what Karel has said on this subject. The problem regulators face, put simply, is they don't have the necessary understanding of ID to come up with sensible regulation of information. This is made worse by that the fact (as Donald Rumsfeld might have put it) they don't know they don't know. At CRI we have been working on this problem for some time, with mixed success. You can see some of our efforts on this in our publications, and, as Karel knows because he has done a lot of work on it, we are working on something at the moment that will push the case for better training of regulators a bit further. But it is hard and largely unrewarding work. Most EU regulators with whom I have engaged on this subject regard me as 'unhelpful' and some refuse to attend conferences, if I am a speaker (mind you, I feel like that myself sometimes). The basic shift that needs to occur is from regulating content to regulating performance Put differently it's a matter of looking at ends rather than means. The end is readable text. As we all agree, regulating font size is a poor means of getting to that particular outcome. I could go on but? David -- blog: www.communication.org.au/dsblog web: http://www.communication.org.au -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080404/167a1d69/attachment-0004.htm From r.waller at reading.ac.uk Fri Apr 4 10:07:17 2008 From: r.waller at reading.ac.uk (Rob Waller) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 09:07:17 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: <31A43BA4-AA08-42C4-B663-B9C5CD61C158@reading.ac.uk> Can I add a couple of thoughts to the debate? There is undoubtedly a big problem of naive information design becoming enshrined in the law, and there are plenty of historical and current examples of this. However, as a profession we do need to respond to the kind of concerns the politicians are expressing. As an aside I don't believe the fact that 12pt is a vague definition is a big problem in practice - even 12pt Bembo would be more legible than what we get now. More to the point is that to print most terms of business in 12pt of any typeface would lead to acres of paper, and, as others have suggested, would not ensure they are read. Indeed customer research often shows people are intimidated by long documents, even when clearly written. I'm not convinced testing is a universal solution - fine for medicines information perhaps, where a highly regulated product is marketed over a period of time in a stable format, but many of the kind of documents this MP is talking about, which include newspaper advertisements and direct mail, are produced to fast timescales and may even be in personalised formats. I think it would be useful to explore a risk-based approach. This is effectively what legal departments in large organisations do when they assess documents before they go out. For example, in some cases they approve an abbreviated reference to 'terms and conditions apply' whereas in other cases they insist the full set is supplied. About three years ago we surveyed practice among mobile phone companies and found quite a wide range of strategies. As well as the two I've mentioned, we also found quite a common practice of summarising the most important terms of business in larger or bolder type - but you need some kind of risk assessment to tell you what is important. A risk-based approach means assessing each item and coming to a view about (a) the likelihood of it being misunderstood, (b) the likelihood of the eventuality it caters for actually happening, and (c) the potential damage to the customer (or indeed to the company's relationship with the customer, and its reputation) if it is misunderstood and the eventuality happens. The risk assessment process could be tested with customers, even if every document cannot be. An example of a low risk item might be the part of the contract that states that if the company is sold to another company, the contract will be transferred to the buyer without changes. Not an everyday occurrence, and not one that would bother most people so long as the service continues without material changes. A high risk item might be the penalties for early release from a contract, or how complaints are handled. Most of us would not mind, and would not be penalised for our laziness, if the very low risk items were in 5pt, or for that matter printed on a banana and fired into space. So long as the high risk items were prominent, legible and designed to be taken seriously. An anecdotal example of this is my own claim under insurance that I was sold by my water supplier to cover problems with drains. It turned out (deep in the small print) that if my drain went under someone else's land to reach the main sewer I was not covered. Yet this is the most common arrangement in the newly built town where I live. So almost no one here can actually claim under this policy. A risk assessment of this clause would have told them there is a very high risk of this eventuality, that it threatens the whole point of the policy, and therefore there is highly likely to be damage to the customer relationship. And to make sure it does damage their reputation in some small way, I will mention that the company is Anglian Water and the 'cover' is provided for them by Homeserve. Rob Waller -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080404/5337615e/attachment-0003.htm From teather at compuserve.com Fri Apr 4 10:18:42 2008 From: teather at compuserve.com (Jane Teather) Date: Fri, 04 Apr 2008 09:18:42 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters reply In-Reply-To: <856FAC7F4D054E9BACABFF2503A89687@KatiePC> References: <856FAC7F4D054E9BACABFF2503A89687@KatiePC> Message-ID: <47F5E462.4050503@compuserve.com> Just adding my voice to those of Karel and David ? this is immensely frustrating for those of us who work on information about medicines and healthcare. As we know, size in points is a very inexact predictor of actual type size, and there?s a huge amount more to legibility than just size. But regulators are ever keen to impose over-simplistic rules, even when these are based on ignorance. We get ridiculous situations where a leaflet has done very well in testing ? to the extent that respondents have spontaneously commented on the ?nice big type? ? but it is deemed unacceptable because, by regulatory standards, the type is too small. If we then reset the same text in a light, condensed font, tightening up the letterspacing, but making it 2 points ?larger?, then it will be fine! This is treating the whole process of diagnostic testing, and the people who need crucial information about their medicines, with contempt. Rather than just grumbling (though we certainly grumble a lot), we have sought to explain: for example, I took some time to respond in detail, complete with diagrams and examples, to one of their proposals, and David has mentioned his efforts. But regulators apparently don?t want to learn and understand; they simply want to make meaningless rules. They have, ominously, just discovered the term ?leading? ? goodness knows what senseless interpretation they will manage to put on it. The Radio 4 piece which Paul originally mentioned would have been hilarious were it not so scary in its implications. If we?re not careful, we really could find ourselves setting text 2 cm high (is that baseline-to-baseline, or x-height? I think we should be told). Regards Jane _______________________________ Jane Teather JET Documentation Services 54A Ferme Park Road London N4 4ED tel: +44 (0) 20 8348 9213 fax: +44 (0) 20 8374 0342 mobile: +44 (0) 7967 366 252 teather at compuserve.com Fellow of the Communication Research Institute http://www.communication.org.au > _________________ > From waarde at glo.be Fri Apr 4 11:42:01 2008 From: waarde at glo.be (Karel van der Waarde) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 11:42:01 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters reply In-Reply-To: <47F5E462.4050503@compuserve.com> References: <856FAC7F4D054E9BACABFF2503A89687@KatiePC> <47F5E462.4050503@compuserve.com> Message-ID: Dear all, Thanks for the reactions. How can we convince regulators and guideline writers that point sizes are not the most important factor when it comes to understanding texts? Two arguments: - 1 - If all documents would follow the 12 point or 14 point standard, would all these documents really be easier to understand? - 2 - Are all documents that use a smaller typesize more difficult to understand? [Most newspapers, novels, study books, webpages, magazines use a smaller typesize. Should all these be discarded as incomprehensible?] I think that it is necessary to focus on the 'understanding' and 'easy to read' criteria, and not on the pointsizes. The relation between the two is certainly not direct. Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be [One anecdote: The new 'Draft Readability guideline' for medicine leaflets in Europe states that the typesize must be at least 12 points. The text of these leaflets is determined by another law and cannot be made shorter. Following the guideline would therefore mean that the dimensions of these leaflets must increase. This would require larger medicine boxes. Even a small size increase - say 10% - of all boxes would mean that most pharmacies in Europe need to rebuild their shelves, and probably their premises, to store the same number of medicines. Unfortunately, the extra costs for larger paper leaflets and cardboard boxes, new folding machines, new stuffing machines, increased transport costs, and rebuilding storage facilities will be paid by all of us. The price of medicines and health-insurance simply goes up. It is even more unfortunate that the increase in typesize does not help to make medicine leaflets easier to read.] From jk at nqpaofu.com Fri Apr 4 12:24:11 2008 From: jk at nqpaofu.com (Jouke Kleerebezem) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 12:24:11 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: Paul's amusing reference and valid questions about readability regulation [should other factors such as kerning, paper quality, ink (color), font type be included?] of the _material_ text bring me to my question to this list's expert readership, for a current project in which the limit of readability is sought for artistic purpose: a hybrid book/pdf/online publication which aims to benefit of specific media qualities, in the mix. A pdf is zoom-able, a 2pt size text at 400+% reads from a screen and prints well. Web browsers scale text but not images. The book, well, is a book -- no need to again praise its superior intimacy and usability. But it needs a seperate reading device to zoom in it. My question is simple: in your experience, which combination of font, type size, ink color, paper quality gives the most extreme detail in the hands of a skilled off-set printer? Or in another printing technique, provided the result would be 'ink on paper'. Which material qualities would enlarge best under the magnifying glass? Artist James Lee Byars once showed me a 10x10mm piece of paper which had been printed on some Swiss mountain in a dust free room and under other 'perfect' conditions. I forgot how much words it contained but its type size was under 2pt for sure. Then we know about small type engraved rice grains, pin heads etc. I'd be interested in any reference to miniature (text) print and other fabrication/reproduction 'out there'. Like the miniature books exhibition at http://www.indiana.edu/~liblilly/miniatures/index.shtml Today we have the nano bible: http://popsci.typepad.com/popsci/2007/12/nanotech-squeez.html . With reading devices developing parallel to writing technologies, where will practical applications go? Jouke Kleerebezem nomanisanisland at wanadoo.fr -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080404/22b8ee3b/attachment-0003.htm From r.waller at reading.ac.uk Fri Apr 4 12:58:25 2008 From: r.waller at reading.ac.uk (Rob Waller) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 11:58:25 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: <68EA3006-3760-46F7-B1C5-F63C9AA7BFDD@reading.ac.uk> Jouke's post reminds me that what we call 'small print' in the UK, is known as 'fine print' in the USA. There the custom is apparently to print business contracts on Columbia iron presses, using hand-made rag paper, bound in the finest calfskin. Rob Waller -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080404/e69ae505/attachment-0003.htm From carina.andersson at mdh.se Fri Apr 4 13:03:54 2008 From: carina.andersson at mdh.se (Carina Andersson) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 13:03:54 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters reply In-Reply-To: References: <856FAC7F4D054E9BACABFF2503A89687@KatiePC> <47F5E462.4050503@compuserve.com> Message-ID: <80DAB1E7B9936448A084E71CC703AFF226EA81A200@MBXCLUSTER.mdh.local> Dear alla and Karel This discussion seems to be about legibility, readability and "reading value". Does an individual perceive a text, picture or form? Does an individual understand a specific text, picture or form? Does an individual have an interest in the text, picture or form? I see these three concepts as three communicative levels. They are different, but still dependent on each other. You need the first level, legibility, to reach a second level, readability and so on. All the best Carina Andersson PhD-Candidate in Information design School of Innovation, Design and Engineering M?lardalen University Box 325 SE-631 05 Eskilstuna Sweden Phone: +46 (0)16-15 36 89 Cellphone: +46 (0)73- 182 23 19 Fax: +46 (0)16-15 36 50 -----Ursprungligt meddelande----- Fr?n: infodesign-cafe-bounces at list.informationdesign.org [mailto:infodesign-cafe-bounces at list.informationdesign.org] F?r Karel van der Waarde Skickat: den 4 april 2008 11:42 Till: Discussions about information design ?mne: Re: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters reply Dear all, Thanks for the reactions. How can we convince regulators and guideline writers that point sizes are not the most important factor when it comes to understanding texts? Two arguments: - 1 - If all documents would follow the 12 point or 14 point standard, would all these documents really be easier to understand? - 2 - Are all documents that use a smaller typesize more difficult to understand? [Most newspapers, novels, study books, webpages, magazines use a smaller typesize. Should all these be discarded as incomprehensible?] I think that it is necessary to focus on the 'understanding' and 'easy to read' criteria, and not on the pointsizes. The relation between the two is certainly not direct. Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be [One anecdote: The new 'Draft Readability guideline' for medicine leaflets in Europe states that the typesize must be at least 12 points. The text of these leaflets is determined by another law and cannot be made shorter. Following the guideline would therefore mean that the dimensions of these leaflets must increase. This would require larger medicine boxes. Even a small size increase - say 10% - of all boxes would mean that most pharmacies in Europe need to rebuild their shelves, and probably their premises, to store the same number of medicines. Unfortunately, the extra costs for larger paper leaflets and cardboard boxes, new folding machines, new stuffing machines, increased transport costs, and rebuilding storage facilities will be paid by all of us. The price of medicines and health-insurance simply goes up. It is even more unfortunate that the increase in typesize does not help to make medicine leaflets easier to read.] ___________________________________________________________________ Use the following address to post a message to all subscribers: infodesign-cafe at list.informationdesign.org To subscribe, unsubscribe or change your options, visit: http://list.InformationDesign.org/mailman/listinfo/infodesign-cafe For all Information Design matters: http://InformationDesign.org Problems? Write to: InfoDesign-Cafe-Admin at list.InformationDesign.org ___________________________________________________________________ From SWANSONG at ecu.edu Fri Apr 4 14:31:56 2008 From: SWANSONG at ecu.edu (Swanson, Gunnar) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 08:31:56 -0400 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters reply References: <856FAC7F4D054E9BACABFF2503A89687@KatiePC> Message-ID: <556BA53FA6DBA14CBD1605F1735C0FEC76F460@ecufs9.intra.ecu.edu> I've been assuming that this was a discussion of some specific British or European regulatory action regarding some specific variety of text and I don't understand the context so I've stayed out of it. Sweeping statements about the benefits of type size for readability tend to lead to clumsy typesetting that is often more difficult to read than the smaller type it is meant to prevent. ICOGRADA does a monthly poll on its newsletter/website that makes me embarrassed to be a graphic designer. It is consistently inane, misleading, or just plain stupid. It's at http://www.icograda.org/feature/opinion_poll.htm This month's is perhaps the worst.: IS 12 POINT FONT LARGE ENOUGH? This weeks opinion poll comes from Samantha S. Sannella, the President of Design Exchange. Pet Peve: Small Font. I am guilty of it. We are guilty of it. It's in our newsletters, on our business cards and on many of our publications. Is 12 point font large enough? Personally, I type in 18 point font nowadays and change the font size before sending. When did 9, 10 or 11 point font become acceptable? Am I getting old? Actually, I tested my eyes recently and they were perfect, however, the doctor did not test my eye fatigue - which I believe contributes to my recent dislike of miniscule letters. Of course, I have a theory - Go Big or Go Home. Calling all graphic designers: let's go big. What is your take? Is 12 point font large enough? [radio button] I agree with Samantha, 12 point font is just too small! [radio button] I think that font size should be relative to the medium one is working with. [radio button] I think that 12 point font is completely adequate. ---------- I suggest 72 pt Franklin Gothic Demi in black ink on smooth 87% reflectance warm white paper for the following: WTF? It seems, however, that 18 point may be adequate for the following: No, Samantha. I am old. You are stupid. They are not the same. Gunnar ---------- Gunnar Swanson Design Office 1901 East 6th Street Greenville, North Carolina 27858 USA gunnar at gunnarswanson.com +1 252 258 7006 http://www.gunnarswanson.com at East Carolina University: swansong at ecu.edu +1 252 328 2839 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080404/ebb90bef/attachment-0002.htm From katie at raincharm.co.uk Fri Apr 4 15:21:11 2008 From: katie at raincharm.co.uk (Raincharm Communications Limited) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 14:21:11 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: reply to karel and others - size matters Message-ID: <294CEEAA08F045A2971A7B64E7321136@KatiePC> Hi I totally agree with Karel's comment on how it is the readability of the actual content which is the crucial element. It makes no difference how large a font is if the text is complex and poorly written. I also take the point on the ease of making text larger in electronic and digital formats. Despite all the developments in technology and providing information online in a variety of downloadable formats, people still demand print based materials for a lot of documents, particularly government departments launching research findings or new initiatives. I worked on several lengthy documents at the DRC which were supposed to be online only but ended up as expensive print versions. This is without mentioning some of the bilingual print documents which are printed in Welsh and English often running to over 200 pages in some cases. I'd be interested to hear from anyone who is working on easier to read documents. I have several years experience writing and designing Easy Read documents for people with learning disabilities a format which, to my knowledge, has never been applied to the production of patient information leaflets. There is a very real need to design information for the elderly/older people in an easier to read format and patient information leaflets would seem to require this approach. Other audiences who need to be considered are those for whom English is not their first language - migrant workers and asylum seekers/refugees. What information is available in an easier to read format for these people? Happy to share ideas with interested parties. Katie Raincharm Communications Ltd Tel 07971 909007 Registered No. 6267862 VAT No. 913 3364 44 www.raincharm.co.uk -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080404/695f867e/attachment-0002.htm From waarde at glo.be Fri Apr 4 19:29:13 2008 From: waarde at glo.be (Karel van der Waarde) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 19:29:13 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: <31A43BA4-AA08-42C4-B663-B9C5CD61C158@reading.ac.uk> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> <31A43BA4-AA08-42C4-B663-B9C5CD61C158@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: Rob, Thanks for your reply. >I'm not convinced testing is a universal solution - fine for >medicines information perhaps, where a highly regulated product is >marketed over a period of time in a stable format, but many of the >kind of documents this MP is talking about, which include newspaper >advertisements and direct mail, are produced to fast timescales and >may even be in personalised formats. The way the tests are applied to medicines at the moment is far from optimal and probably even detrimental. As Jane Teather mentioned: the results are often ignored or overruled by even more obscure guidelines. >I think it would be useful to explore a risk-based approach. This is >effectively what legal departments in large organisations do when >they assess documents before they go out. For example, in some cases >they approve an abbreviated reference to 'terms and conditions >apply' whereas in other cases they insist the full set is supplied. >About three years ago we surveyed practice among mobile phone >companies and found quite a wide range of strategies. As well as the >two I've mentioned, we also found quite a common practice of >summarising the most important terms of business in larger or bolder >type - but you need some kind of risk assessment to tell you what is >important. This is exactly what patients expect when I discuss alternatives to the current package leaflets, or when test-participants suggest improvements. It would be useful to have a 'creditcard size' card in each medicine box. On the front, it mentions the five or six most important things about a medicine. On the back, it mentions relevant websites, e-mail addresses, phone numbers, patient organizations and government websites. [This is not suitable for all medicines, but would cover approx 80%.] Unfortunately, this is illegal in Europe. The highest risk of poor documents seem to me: - financial costs - wasting energy and materials - wasting time (multiplied by the number of people who read texts) - increasing frustration (= negative fun) I guess that the first two would be of interest to politicians, the first three to companies, and all four to all of us. Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be From conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk Sun Apr 6 08:08:39 2008 From: conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk (Conrad Taylor) Date: Sun, 6 Apr 2008 07:08:39 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: "Bank upgrade excluding blind" Message-ID: May interest Cafe readers who work on the design of financial statements: > "Visually impaired customers of American Express say > they can no longer read their credit card statements > online. > > "In December Amex changed its format for UK statements > from HTML to Portable Document Format or PDF. > > "However, it failed to encode the new PDF documents so > they could be read by "screen readers," special > software used by blind or partially sighted people. Story in full at the BBC News website: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/moneybox/7332216.stm Conrad -- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080406/25974167/attachment.htm From d.sless at communication.org.au Tue Apr 1 11:22:43 2008 From: d.sless at communication.org.au (David Sless) Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2008 20:22:43 +1100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: re live testing In-Reply-To: <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> On 27/03/2008, at 9:10 PM, Rob Waller wrote: > It's also worth saying that as time progresses, the need to test > probably gets greater - a few years ago we were mostly designing > bills that had been rather primitive printouts, and the new designs > were always better than the old. Now, the redesign is quite likely > to be of a bill that has already been through the process, but now > needs updating because products or brands have changed. I think this is true. But with a caveat. Our long range monitoring of such documents shows that they deteriorate quite quickly in use, more so these days with the rapid product and branding changes that Rob mentions. In one of our recent published case histories, we found that a document we originally designed in 1988 had a fairly long life, but by 2003 it had deteriorated from its original excellent performance level to a level where only 42% of customers could use it at an acceptable level. The redesign brought the document up to an acceptable level, but within months of implementation we began to see some deterioration of performance. Mocking up alternative designs for testing, though, can be a real chore. Rob described part of the horror in this type of work > we had to format pages of itemised calls, and it was no one's > favourite task. Add to Rob's un-favourite tasks, the task we sometimes get: hand crafting multiple versions of the same document 'just to illustrate' what each variant will look like. Using software like Quark or InDesign to do this type of repetitive task can drive one to madness. Thankfully, some of the newer software used for driving these dynamic document systems allow for rapid modification and prototyping, saving us all from these horrible tasks. David -- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080401/73f9b0e5/attachment-0007.htm From ralexm at terra.com.br Tue Apr 1 17:39:58 2008 From: ralexm at terra.com.br (Ricardo Martins) Date: Tue, 01 Apr 2008 12:39:58 -0300 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: re live testing In-Reply-To: <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> Message-ID: <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080401/d4a1cc4f/attachment-0007.htm From d.sless at communication.org.au Wed Apr 2 00:43:27 2008 From: d.sless at communication.org.au (David Sless) Date: Wed, 2 Apr 2008 09:43:27 +1100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: re live testing In-Reply-To: <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> Message-ID: <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> On 02/04/2008, at 2:39 AM, Ricardo Martins wrote: > Fortunately, in the last versions, Indesign added some nice > resources to integrate dynamic data through simple databases or XML. > You can populate an TXT file with different data and Indesign loads > it and generate different versions of a document. They can be > printed, exported to PDF or imported by other softwares Thanks for that, Ricardo. I will pass that on to our studio and avoid the workers' compensation cases for work induced insanity. We are using the latest indesign and enjoying many of its features, but I hadn't thought of that. It's obviously there with xml. I just hadn't made the connection. David -- blog: www.communication.org.au/dsblog web: http://www.communication.org.au Professor David Sless BA MSc FRSA CEO ? Communication Research Institute ? ? helping people communicate with people ? Mobile: +61 (0)412 356 795 Phone: +61 (0)3 9489 8640 60 Park Street ? Fitzroy North ? Melbourne ? Australia ? 3068 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080402/f5ce55a0/attachment-0007.htm -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: CRI-lh-logo-col.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 1634 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080402/f5ce55a0/attachment-0007.jpg From ralexm at terra.com.br Wed Apr 2 01:14:17 2008 From: ralexm at terra.com.br (Ricardo Martins) Date: Tue, 01 Apr 2008 20:14:17 -0300 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: re live testing In-Reply-To: <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> Message-ID: <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080401/6c3c7736/attachment-0007.htm -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 1634 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080401/6c3c7736/attachment-0007.jpeg From p.stiff at reading.ac.uk Thu Apr 3 18:33:25 2008 From: p.stiff at reading.ac.uk (Paul Stiff) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 17:33:25 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> Message-ID: <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Today (3 April 2008) on BBC Radio 4?s consumer affairs programme, ?You and yours?, there was an item about ?small print?. This was prompted by Labour MP Nick Palmer?s recent proposal in (the UK) parliament of ?a Bill to make requirements regarding the minimum size of print in certain documents, including those relating to advertising and contracts ... The Bill's objective is ... to ensure that customers are reasonably able to read what [the terms and conditions in advertisements or contracts] say? On radio, the ?You and yours? presenter summarized the Bill?s practical proposal, a legal minimum size for the text of contractual offers, T&Cs, etc: ?at least two millimetres high or twelve point font size?. A speaker representing the Royal National Institute for the Blind then supported the proposal; he could read ?standard size print? only with a magnifying glass. He was followed by MP Nick Palmer, who began with a correction: ?a factual point, it?s two centimetres, rather than two millimetres?. A representative of the Direct Marketing Association was later asked by the Y&Y presenter: ?Would the industry be willing to print larger text, two centimetres high?? DMA person: ?Two centimetres is quite ...? [she was going to say ?large?, but was interrupted by:] Y&Y presenter: ?I?m so sorry, twelve point font size?. And there we leave them, all still a bit confused about how to describe the size of this stuff. [You can hear them via ?listen again? at: ] A point [ho-ho] about describing ?type size? on paper: Attempts to regulate this aspect of the appearance of published text can start with a generalized guideline (e.g., ?You should provide large print/Braille versions of all literature, such as menus, instructions, etc? or ?Large enough to be read by a person wearing spectacles?) but eventually they have to define in numeric terms what they mean by ?large? and ?small?. But most readers of this will know that some ?fonts? at ?twelve point size? look smaller than other ?fonts? at ?ten point size?. That is, bigger is sometimes smaller than smaller. And vice versa. This peculiarity is, of course, not confined to regulation and law. It arises any time anyone needs to make an objective description of this simple typographic dimension. It is possible to be objectively precise about size, but the people who would have to implement typographic-appearance regulations through a specification of some kind are often neither scientists nor even printers or designers. So it would probably be unhelpful to define size in terms such as, for example, degrees of visual angle subtended by the viewed object on the viewer?s retina at a given viewing distance. Anyway, people sometimes want to be able to measure ?type size?, in order to check it themselves and make comparisons. But they usually find it hard to do so. And whatever they measure, they often don?t find it easy to locate an equivalent -- to what they measured -- in the dialog box (formatting palette, whatever) of the software application that they use to produce the required ?large? (or ?small?) print. So, is there a solution to this (old) problem? Paul Stiff From brian at brianparkinson.co.uk Thu Apr 3 19:17:05 2008 From: brian at brianparkinson.co.uk (Brian Parkinson) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 18:17:05 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: <9A8A5853-BBF8-4A78-90EE-667C38F2AE45@brianparkinson.co.uk> Good to hear your voice again Paul. How are you? All well here - lots of work at the moment - some of it interesting. Hope to see you before too long Brian From brian at brianparkinson.co.uk Thu Apr 3 19:17:55 2008 From: brian at brianparkinson.co.uk (Brian Parkinson) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 18:17:55 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: This proposal needs to go further I think - readable type has to go hand in hand with clearly written text. If the content is impenetrable legalese, even 20cm lettering won't help people to understand it. Brian Parkinson On 3 Apr 2008, at April 3 5:33 pm, Paul Stiff wrote: > This was prompted by Labour MP Nick Palmer?s recent proposal in (the > UK) parliament of ?a Bill to make requirements regarding the minimum > size of print in certain documents, including those relating to > advertising and contracts ... The Bill's objective is ... to ensure > that customers are reasonably able to read what [the terms and > conditions in advertisements or contracts] say? From waarde at glo.be Thu Apr 3 20:52:31 2008 From: waarde at glo.be (Karel van der Waarde) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 20:52:31 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: Dear Paul, Brian, It remains a pleasant discussion. It might be worth splitting this issue into two: a. Determining if text can be read. I don't think there is any typesize that would 'enable people to read a text'. The typesize on medical package leaflets is frequently 'too small' for patients, but the same patients can read the back of a lottery ticket without any problems ... b. Developing regulations and laws. Some of the information about medicines must be a specific typesize. The EU-readability guideline states that package leaflets must be in a typsize of "8 point Didot". [I've got no idea why they use a Didot-unit, why they specify non-metric measurements, nor where the '8' came from.] But even with a specified typesize, it is very easy to make a text illegible. Just print 8 point text (or 20 point) in a pale yellow on a slightly off-white background and print every second word upside down and in reverse. Even a 'readability formula' wouldn't notice this ... Unfortunately, specifying a typesize in a regulation also means that it must be measurable. It is no good to state '12 point' if nobody is able to check if a printed text is really 12 points ... The only person who can really tell if a text can be read and understood is a reader. [Well trained and experienced designers can make a good guess, but it remains a guess.] I'm convinced that we have to ask a small number of readers to see if our guesses are correct or need to be modified. Technology has developed a little so we can actually provide most information in most sizes - on request. And that solves the regulatory problem as well. Any law in this area must make it obligatory to involve people (non-designers, readers, potential users) in the design process and ask them to use texts. The laws should simply ask for proof that 'a document enables people to act appropriately'. This proof should indicate which people should be enabled, which actions are relevant, and what appropriate levels of success are. If visually impaired people need to act, than the information must be supplied in a format that 'enables a visually impaired person to act appropriately'. Same for people who have difficulties reading English, or difficulties in reading at all. It's a serious shortcoming of the information design community that we have not been able to convince politicians in the last 30 years or so that graphic design literature is not really suitable as a base for legislation. It's a serious shortcoming of politicians that they still base regulations on the production of large quantities of identically printed paper sheets. Digital technology makes it relatively simple to provide information in several formats (large print, small print, sound), on screen and on paper, and in all required languages. It seems that the UK Parliament is again fighting against the wrong symptoms. They did the same in 1848 when they adopted the 'Nuisances removal and contagious diseases prevention act' that was based on the idea that cholera was caused by bad smells. Unfortunately, removing the bad smell did not protect against cholera. Dumping the waste in the Thames actually caused another 15.000 cholera-casualties in 1848 and 1849. In other words, if you look at 'small print' only, it is unlikely any law can 'ensure that customers are reasonably able to read what they say'. Removing 'small type' from all documents does not ensure that people are able to read what they say'. Involving people in the development process and providing information in all required formats might need to be considered. Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be >Today (3 April 2008) on BBC Radio 4?s consumer affairs programme,? >?You and yours?, there was an item about ?small print?. > >This was prompted by Labour MP Nick Palmer?s recent proposal in (the? >UK) parliament of ?a Bill to make requirements regarding the minimum? >size of print in certain documents, including those relating to? >advertising and contracts ... The Bill's objective is ... to ensure? >that customers are reasonably able to read what [the terms and? >conditions in advertisements or contracts] say? > >debtext/80226-0006.htm#08022642000680> > >On radio, the ?You and yours? presenter summarized the Bill?s? >practical proposal, a legal minimum size for the text of contractual? >offers, T&Cs, etc: ?at least two millimetres high or twelve point? >font size?. > >A speaker representing the Royal National Institute for the Blind? >then supported the proposal; he could read ?standard size print? only? >with a magnifying glass. > >He was followed by MP Nick Palmer, who began with a correction: ?a? >factual point, it?s two centimetres, rather than two millimetres?. > >A representative of the Direct Marketing Association was later asked? >by the Y&Y presenter: ?Would the industry be willing to print larger? >text, two centimetres high?? > >DMA person: ?Two centimetres is quite ...? > >[she was going to say ?large?, but was interrupted by:] > >Y&Y presenter: ?I?m so sorry, twelve point font size?. > >And there we leave them, all still a bit confused about how to? >describe the size of this stuff. [You can hear them via ?listen? >again? at: ] > >A point [ho-ho] about describing ?type size? on paper: > >Attempts to regulate this aspect of the appearance of published text? >can start with a generalized guideline (e.g., ?You should provide? >large print/Braille versions of all literature, such as menus,? >instructions, etc? or ?Large enough to be read by a person wearing? >spectacles?) but eventually they have to define in numeric terms what? >they mean by ?large? and ?small?. > >But most readers of this will know that some ?fonts? at ?twelve point? >size? look smaller than other ?fonts? at ?ten point size?. That is,? >bigger is sometimes smaller than smaller. And vice versa. > >This peculiarity is, of course, not confined to regulation and law.? >It arises any time anyone needs to make an objective description of? >this simple typographic dimension. > >It is possible to be objectively precise about size, but the people? >who would have to implement typographic-appearance regulations? >through a specification of some kind are often neither scientists nor? >even printers or designers. So it would probably be unhelpful to? >define size in terms such as, for example, degrees of visual angle? >subtended by the viewed object on the viewer?s retina at a given? >viewing distance. > >Anyway, people sometimes want to be able to measure ?type size?, in? >order to check it themselves and make comparisons. But they usually? >find it hard to do so. And whatever they measure, they often don?t? >find it easy to locate an equivalent -- to what they measured -- in? >the dialog box (formatting palette, whatever) of the software? >application that they use to produce the required ?large? (or? >?small?) print. > >So, is there a solution to this (old) problem? > >Paul Stiff From katie at raincharm.co.uk Thu Apr 3 21:17:26 2008 From: katie at raincharm.co.uk (Raincharm Communications Limited) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 20:17:26 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters reply Message-ID: <856FAC7F4D054E9BACABFF2503A89687@KatiePC> Hi Just read the post relating to the recent Radio 4 debate on font size and what should be set as a standard. As former publications and editorial manager at the Disability Rights Commission (DRC), I was involved in the writing and implementation of an overall publications strategy which included a style guide on font size, typeface and various other accessibility issues. When the DRC began we decided to set 14 point as a standard font size for all documents, excepting those in Easy Read (aimed at people with learning disabilities) which were set at 16 point. It was always quite a struggle convincing other organisations to do the same mainly due to the cost implications - bigger font size meaning more pages and therefore a higher cost. However, once the budget issues are taken out of the equation one is left with the simple fact that a 14 point font size is much clearer and easier to read. I do remember we struggled with maintaining this approach when buying ad space as the cost is so exorbitant in 14 point. Another bone of contention was font size of footnotes in lengthy research documents but we always stuck to our guns and it seemed to pay off! Now working as a consultant advising businesses and other organisations on how to make their information provision more accessible and inclusive, I do still recommend a 14 point font size. Surely it is more important to improve the quality and accessibility of a document for everyone, not only people with impairments but also those who may have low literacy skills or for whom English is not their first language. This approach only ends up benefiting everyone. Equality of opportunity and inclusivity can only be achieved if people commit to what is an exemplary standard ie what goes above and beyond the 'norm'. It is all about setting a precedent for best practice. Once this has been accepted as the standard then others will follow suit. Best Wishes Katie Grant Director Raincharm Communications Ltd Tel 07971 909007 Registered No. 6267862 VAT No. 913 3364 44 www.raincharm.co.uk -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080403/b76d2e33/attachment-0005.htm From conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk Thu Apr 3 22:57:24 2008 From: conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk (Conrad Taylor) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 21:57:24 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: Paul Stiff wrote, sagely and entertainingly: >Attempts to regulate this aspect of the appearance of published text? >can start with a generalized guideline (e.g., ?You should provide? >large print/Braille versions of all literature, such as menus,? >instructions, etc? or ?Large enough to be read by a person wearing? >spectacles?) but eventually they have to define in numeric terms what? >they mean by ?large? and ?small?. > >But most readers of this will know that some ?fonts? at ?twelve point? >size? look smaller than other ?fonts? at ?ten point size?. That is, >bigger is sometimes smaller than smaller. And vice versa. Since 12pt in one font may be either larger or smaller, more or less legible than 12pt in another font, the obvious answer for the unimaginative and unskilled legislator is to define not only the size, but the font itself. In the British context, I am sure this New Labour government would be very happy to define the specifications as Arial 14pt. They bow to Microsoft in much else, so why not this? This would cap Microsoft's success in getting approval from an exhausted international standards community for their OfficeOpen XML "standard". :-) Conrad -- From d.sless at communication.org.au Fri Apr 4 05:17:44 2008 From: d.sless at communication.org.au (David Sless) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 14:17:44 +1100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: Hi All, To underline and elaborate what Karel has said on this subject. The problem regulators face, put simply, is they don't have the necessary understanding of ID to come up with sensible regulation of information. This is made worse by that the fact (as Donald Rumsfeld might have put it) they don't know they don't know. At CRI we have been working on this problem for some time, with mixed success. You can see some of our efforts on this in our publications, and, as Karel knows because he has done a lot of work on it, we are working on something at the moment that will push the case for better training of regulators a bit further. But it is hard and largely unrewarding work. Most EU regulators with whom I have engaged on this subject regard me as 'unhelpful' and some refuse to attend conferences, if I am a speaker (mind you, I feel like that myself sometimes). The basic shift that needs to occur is from regulating content to regulating performance Put differently it's a matter of looking at ends rather than means. The end is readable text. As we all agree, regulating font size is a poor means of getting to that particular outcome. I could go on but? David -- blog: www.communication.org.au/dsblog web: http://www.communication.org.au -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080404/167a1d69/attachment-0005.htm From r.waller at reading.ac.uk Fri Apr 4 10:07:17 2008 From: r.waller at reading.ac.uk (Rob Waller) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 09:07:17 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: <31A43BA4-AA08-42C4-B663-B9C5CD61C158@reading.ac.uk> Can I add a couple of thoughts to the debate? There is undoubtedly a big problem of naive information design becoming enshrined in the law, and there are plenty of historical and current examples of this. However, as a profession we do need to respond to the kind of concerns the politicians are expressing. As an aside I don't believe the fact that 12pt is a vague definition is a big problem in practice - even 12pt Bembo would be more legible than what we get now. More to the point is that to print most terms of business in 12pt of any typeface would lead to acres of paper, and, as others have suggested, would not ensure they are read. Indeed customer research often shows people are intimidated by long documents, even when clearly written. I'm not convinced testing is a universal solution - fine for medicines information perhaps, where a highly regulated product is marketed over a period of time in a stable format, but many of the kind of documents this MP is talking about, which include newspaper advertisements and direct mail, are produced to fast timescales and may even be in personalised formats. I think it would be useful to explore a risk-based approach. This is effectively what legal departments in large organisations do when they assess documents before they go out. For example, in some cases they approve an abbreviated reference to 'terms and conditions apply' whereas in other cases they insist the full set is supplied. About three years ago we surveyed practice among mobile phone companies and found quite a wide range of strategies. As well as the two I've mentioned, we also found quite a common practice of summarising the most important terms of business in larger or bolder type - but you need some kind of risk assessment to tell you what is important. A risk-based approach means assessing each item and coming to a view about (a) the likelihood of it being misunderstood, (b) the likelihood of the eventuality it caters for actually happening, and (c) the potential damage to the customer (or indeed to the company's relationship with the customer, and its reputation) if it is misunderstood and the eventuality happens. The risk assessment process could be tested with customers, even if every document cannot be. An example of a low risk item might be the part of the contract that states that if the company is sold to another company, the contract will be transferred to the buyer without changes. Not an everyday occurrence, and not one that would bother most people so long as the service continues without material changes. A high risk item might be the penalties for early release from a contract, or how complaints are handled. Most of us would not mind, and would not be penalised for our laziness, if the very low risk items were in 5pt, or for that matter printed on a banana and fired into space. So long as the high risk items were prominent, legible and designed to be taken seriously. An anecdotal example of this is my own claim under insurance that I was sold by my water supplier to cover problems with drains. It turned out (deep in the small print) that if my drain went under someone else's land to reach the main sewer I was not covered. Yet this is the most common arrangement in the newly built town where I live. So almost no one here can actually claim under this policy. A risk assessment of this clause would have told them there is a very high risk of this eventuality, that it threatens the whole point of the policy, and therefore there is highly likely to be damage to the customer relationship. And to make sure it does damage their reputation in some small way, I will mention that the company is Anglian Water and the 'cover' is provided for them by Homeserve. Rob Waller -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080404/5337615e/attachment-0004.htm From teather at compuserve.com Fri Apr 4 10:18:42 2008 From: teather at compuserve.com (Jane Teather) Date: Fri, 04 Apr 2008 09:18:42 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters reply In-Reply-To: <856FAC7F4D054E9BACABFF2503A89687@KatiePC> References: <856FAC7F4D054E9BACABFF2503A89687@KatiePC> Message-ID: <47F5E462.4050503@compuserve.com> Just adding my voice to those of Karel and David ? this is immensely frustrating for those of us who work on information about medicines and healthcare. As we know, size in points is a very inexact predictor of actual type size, and there?s a huge amount more to legibility than just size. But regulators are ever keen to impose over-simplistic rules, even when these are based on ignorance. We get ridiculous situations where a leaflet has done very well in testing ? to the extent that respondents have spontaneously commented on the ?nice big type? ? but it is deemed unacceptable because, by regulatory standards, the type is too small. If we then reset the same text in a light, condensed font, tightening up the letterspacing, but making it 2 points ?larger?, then it will be fine! This is treating the whole process of diagnostic testing, and the people who need crucial information about their medicines, with contempt. Rather than just grumbling (though we certainly grumble a lot), we have sought to explain: for example, I took some time to respond in detail, complete with diagrams and examples, to one of their proposals, and David has mentioned his efforts. But regulators apparently don?t want to learn and understand; they simply want to make meaningless rules. They have, ominously, just discovered the term ?leading? ? goodness knows what senseless interpretation they will manage to put on it. The Radio 4 piece which Paul originally mentioned would have been hilarious were it not so scary in its implications. If we?re not careful, we really could find ourselves setting text 2 cm high (is that baseline-to-baseline, or x-height? I think we should be told). Regards Jane _______________________________ Jane Teather JET Documentation Services 54A Ferme Park Road London N4 4ED tel: +44 (0) 20 8348 9213 fax: +44 (0) 20 8374 0342 mobile: +44 (0) 7967 366 252 teather at compuserve.com Fellow of the Communication Research Institute http://www.communication.org.au > _________________ > From waarde at glo.be Fri Apr 4 11:42:01 2008 From: waarde at glo.be (Karel van der Waarde) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 11:42:01 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters reply In-Reply-To: <47F5E462.4050503@compuserve.com> References: <856FAC7F4D054E9BACABFF2503A89687@KatiePC> <47F5E462.4050503@compuserve.com> Message-ID: Dear all, Thanks for the reactions. How can we convince regulators and guideline writers that point sizes are not the most important factor when it comes to understanding texts? Two arguments: - 1 - If all documents would follow the 12 point or 14 point standard, would all these documents really be easier to understand? - 2 - Are all documents that use a smaller typesize more difficult to understand? [Most newspapers, novels, study books, webpages, magazines use a smaller typesize. Should all these be discarded as incomprehensible?] I think that it is necessary to focus on the 'understanding' and 'easy to read' criteria, and not on the pointsizes. The relation between the two is certainly not direct. Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be [One anecdote: The new 'Draft Readability guideline' for medicine leaflets in Europe states that the typesize must be at least 12 points. The text of these leaflets is determined by another law and cannot be made shorter. Following the guideline would therefore mean that the dimensions of these leaflets must increase. This would require larger medicine boxes. Even a small size increase - say 10% - of all boxes would mean that most pharmacies in Europe need to rebuild their shelves, and probably their premises, to store the same number of medicines. Unfortunately, the extra costs for larger paper leaflets and cardboard boxes, new folding machines, new stuffing machines, increased transport costs, and rebuilding storage facilities will be paid by all of us. The price of medicines and health-insurance simply goes up. It is even more unfortunate that the increase in typesize does not help to make medicine leaflets easier to read.] From jk at nqpaofu.com Fri Apr 4 12:24:11 2008 From: jk at nqpaofu.com (Jouke Kleerebezem) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 12:24:11 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: Paul's amusing reference and valid questions about readability regulation [should other factors such as kerning, paper quality, ink (color), font type be included?] of the _material_ text bring me to my question to this list's expert readership, for a current project in which the limit of readability is sought for artistic purpose: a hybrid book/pdf/online publication which aims to benefit of specific media qualities, in the mix. A pdf is zoom-able, a 2pt size text at 400+% reads from a screen and prints well. Web browsers scale text but not images. The book, well, is a book -- no need to again praise its superior intimacy and usability. But it needs a seperate reading device to zoom in it. My question is simple: in your experience, which combination of font, type size, ink color, paper quality gives the most extreme detail in the hands of a skilled off-set printer? Or in another printing technique, provided the result would be 'ink on paper'. Which material qualities would enlarge best under the magnifying glass? Artist James Lee Byars once showed me a 10x10mm piece of paper which had been printed on some Swiss mountain in a dust free room and under other 'perfect' conditions. I forgot how much words it contained but its type size was under 2pt for sure. Then we know about small type engraved rice grains, pin heads etc. I'd be interested in any reference to miniature (text) print and other fabrication/reproduction 'out there'. Like the miniature books exhibition at http://www.indiana.edu/~liblilly/miniatures/index.shtml Today we have the nano bible: http://popsci.typepad.com/popsci/2007/12/nanotech-squeez.html . With reading devices developing parallel to writing technologies, where will practical applications go? Jouke Kleerebezem nomanisanisland at wanadoo.fr -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080404/22b8ee3b/attachment-0004.htm From r.waller at reading.ac.uk Fri Apr 4 12:58:25 2008 From: r.waller at reading.ac.uk (Rob Waller) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 11:58:25 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: <68EA3006-3760-46F7-B1C5-F63C9AA7BFDD@reading.ac.uk> Jouke's post reminds me that what we call 'small print' in the UK, is known as 'fine print' in the USA. There the custom is apparently to print business contracts on Columbia iron presses, using hand-made rag paper, bound in the finest calfskin. Rob Waller -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080404/e69ae505/attachment-0004.htm From carina.andersson at mdh.se Fri Apr 4 13:03:54 2008 From: carina.andersson at mdh.se (Carina Andersson) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 13:03:54 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters reply In-Reply-To: References: <856FAC7F4D054E9BACABFF2503A89687@KatiePC> <47F5E462.4050503@compuserve.com> Message-ID: <80DAB1E7B9936448A084E71CC703AFF226EA81A200@MBXCLUSTER.mdh.local> Dear alla and Karel This discussion seems to be about legibility, readability and "reading value". Does an individual perceive a text, picture or form? Does an individual understand a specific text, picture or form? Does an individual have an interest in the text, picture or form? I see these three concepts as three communicative levels. They are different, but still dependent on each other. You need the first level, legibility, to reach a second level, readability and so on. All the best Carina Andersson PhD-Candidate in Information design School of Innovation, Design and Engineering M?lardalen University Box 325 SE-631 05 Eskilstuna Sweden Phone: +46 (0)16-15 36 89 Cellphone: +46 (0)73- 182 23 19 Fax: +46 (0)16-15 36 50 -----Ursprungligt meddelande----- Fr?n: infodesign-cafe-bounces at list.informationdesign.org [mailto:infodesign-cafe-bounces at list.informationdesign.org] F?r Karel van der Waarde Skickat: den 4 april 2008 11:42 Till: Discussions about information design ?mne: Re: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters reply Dear all, Thanks for the reactions. How can we convince regulators and guideline writers that point sizes are not the most important factor when it comes to understanding texts? Two arguments: - 1 - If all documents would follow the 12 point or 14 point standard, would all these documents really be easier to understand? - 2 - Are all documents that use a smaller typesize more difficult to understand? [Most newspapers, novels, study books, webpages, magazines use a smaller typesize. Should all these be discarded as incomprehensible?] I think that it is necessary to focus on the 'understanding' and 'easy to read' criteria, and not on the pointsizes. The relation between the two is certainly not direct. Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be [One anecdote: The new 'Draft Readability guideline' for medicine leaflets in Europe states that the typesize must be at least 12 points. The text of these leaflets is determined by another law and cannot be made shorter. Following the guideline would therefore mean that the dimensions of these leaflets must increase. This would require larger medicine boxes. Even a small size increase - say 10% - of all boxes would mean that most pharmacies in Europe need to rebuild their shelves, and probably their premises, to store the same number of medicines. Unfortunately, the extra costs for larger paper leaflets and cardboard boxes, new folding machines, new stuffing machines, increased transport costs, and rebuilding storage facilities will be paid by all of us. The price of medicines and health-insurance simply goes up. It is even more unfortunate that the increase in typesize does not help to make medicine leaflets easier to read.] ___________________________________________________________________ Use the following address to post a message to all subscribers: infodesign-cafe at list.informationdesign.org To subscribe, unsubscribe or change your options, visit: http://list.InformationDesign.org/mailman/listinfo/infodesign-cafe For all Information Design matters: http://InformationDesign.org Problems? Write to: InfoDesign-Cafe-Admin at list.InformationDesign.org ___________________________________________________________________ From SWANSONG at ecu.edu Fri Apr 4 14:31:56 2008 From: SWANSONG at ecu.edu (Swanson, Gunnar) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 08:31:56 -0400 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters reply References: <856FAC7F4D054E9BACABFF2503A89687@KatiePC> Message-ID: <556BA53FA6DBA14CBD1605F1735C0FEC76F460@ecufs9.intra.ecu.edu> I've been assuming that this was a discussion of some specific British or European regulatory action regarding some specific variety of text and I don't understand the context so I've stayed out of it. Sweeping statements about the benefits of type size for readability tend to lead to clumsy typesetting that is often more difficult to read than the smaller type it is meant to prevent. ICOGRADA does a monthly poll on its newsletter/website that makes me embarrassed to be a graphic designer. It is consistently inane, misleading, or just plain stupid. It's at http://www.icograda.org/feature/opinion_poll.htm This month's is perhaps the worst.: IS 12 POINT FONT LARGE ENOUGH? This weeks opinion poll comes from Samantha S. Sannella, the President of Design Exchange. Pet Peve: Small Font. I am guilty of it. We are guilty of it. It's in our newsletters, on our business cards and on many of our publications. Is 12 point font large enough? Personally, I type in 18 point font nowadays and change the font size before sending. When did 9, 10 or 11 point font become acceptable? Am I getting old? Actually, I tested my eyes recently and they were perfect, however, the doctor did not test my eye fatigue - which I believe contributes to my recent dislike of miniscule letters. Of course, I have a theory - Go Big or Go Home. Calling all graphic designers: let's go big. What is your take? Is 12 point font large enough? [radio button] I agree with Samantha, 12 point font is just too small! [radio button] I think that font size should be relative to the medium one is working with. [radio button] I think that 12 point font is completely adequate. ---------- I suggest 72 pt Franklin Gothic Demi in black ink on smooth 87% reflectance warm white paper for the following: WTF? It seems, however, that 18 point may be adequate for the following: No, Samantha. I am old. You are stupid. They are not the same. Gunnar ---------- Gunnar Swanson Design Office 1901 East 6th Street Greenville, North Carolina 27858 USA gunnar at gunnarswanson.com +1 252 258 7006 http://www.gunnarswanson.com at East Carolina University: swansong at ecu.edu +1 252 328 2839 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080404/ebb90bef/attachment-0003.htm From katie at raincharm.co.uk Fri Apr 4 15:21:11 2008 From: katie at raincharm.co.uk (Raincharm Communications Limited) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 14:21:11 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: reply to karel and others - size matters Message-ID: <294CEEAA08F045A2971A7B64E7321136@KatiePC> Hi I totally agree with Karel's comment on how it is the readability of the actual content which is the crucial element. It makes no difference how large a font is if the text is complex and poorly written. I also take the point on the ease of making text larger in electronic and digital formats. Despite all the developments in technology and providing information online in a variety of downloadable formats, people still demand print based materials for a lot of documents, particularly government departments launching research findings or new initiatives. I worked on several lengthy documents at the DRC which were supposed to be online only but ended up as expensive print versions. This is without mentioning some of the bilingual print documents which are printed in Welsh and English often running to over 200 pages in some cases. I'd be interested to hear from anyone who is working on easier to read documents. I have several years experience writing and designing Easy Read documents for people with learning disabilities a format which, to my knowledge, has never been applied to the production of patient information leaflets. There is a very real need to design information for the elderly/older people in an easier to read format and patient information leaflets would seem to require this approach. Other audiences who need to be considered are those for whom English is not their first language - migrant workers and asylum seekers/refugees. What information is available in an easier to read format for these people? Happy to share ideas with interested parties. Katie Raincharm Communications Ltd Tel 07971 909007 Registered No. 6267862 VAT No. 913 3364 44 www.raincharm.co.uk -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080404/695f867e/attachment-0003.htm From waarde at glo.be Fri Apr 4 19:29:13 2008 From: waarde at glo.be (Karel van der Waarde) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 19:29:13 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: <31A43BA4-AA08-42C4-B663-B9C5CD61C158@reading.ac.uk> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> <31A43BA4-AA08-42C4-B663-B9C5CD61C158@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: Rob, Thanks for your reply. >I'm not convinced testing is a universal solution - fine for >medicines information perhaps, where a highly regulated product is >marketed over a period of time in a stable format, but many of the >kind of documents this MP is talking about, which include newspaper >advertisements and direct mail, are produced to fast timescales and >may even be in personalised formats. The way the tests are applied to medicines at the moment is far from optimal and probably even detrimental. As Jane Teather mentioned: the results are often ignored or overruled by even more obscure guidelines. >I think it would be useful to explore a risk-based approach. This is >effectively what legal departments in large organisations do when >they assess documents before they go out. For example, in some cases >they approve an abbreviated reference to 'terms and conditions >apply' whereas in other cases they insist the full set is supplied. >About three years ago we surveyed practice among mobile phone >companies and found quite a wide range of strategies. As well as the >two I've mentioned, we also found quite a common practice of >summarising the most important terms of business in larger or bolder >type - but you need some kind of risk assessment to tell you what is >important. This is exactly what patients expect when I discuss alternatives to the current package leaflets, or when test-participants suggest improvements. It would be useful to have a 'creditcard size' card in each medicine box. On the front, it mentions the five or six most important things about a medicine. On the back, it mentions relevant websites, e-mail addresses, phone numbers, patient organizations and government websites. [This is not suitable for all medicines, but would cover approx 80%.] Unfortunately, this is illegal in Europe. The highest risk of poor documents seem to me: - financial costs - wasting energy and materials - wasting time (multiplied by the number of people who read texts) - increasing frustration (= negative fun) I guess that the first two would be of interest to politicians, the first three to companies, and all four to all of us. Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be From conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk Sun Apr 6 08:08:39 2008 From: conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk (Conrad Taylor) Date: Sun, 6 Apr 2008 07:08:39 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: "Bank upgrade excluding blind" Message-ID: May interest Cafe readers who work on the design of financial statements: > "Visually impaired customers of American Express say > they can no longer read their credit card statements > online. > > "In December Amex changed its format for UK statements > from HTML to Portable Document Format or PDF. > > "However, it failed to encode the new PDF documents so > they could be read by "screen readers," special > software used by blind or partially sighted people. Story in full at the BBC News website: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/moneybox/7332216.stm Conrad -- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080406/25974167/attachment-0001.htm From marconi2006 at googlemail.com Mon Apr 7 08:47:05 2008 From: marconi2006 at googlemail.com (Jose de Souza) Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2008 07:47:05 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Animated balloon captions Message-ID: Colleagues, I imagine that you have heard about a company called "Bubbleply.com", this web video-sharing service allows anyone to add various types of captions (i.e., comics balloon like frames embedded with text, pictures or films) to video. A video tutorial is available at http://www.bubbleply.com I am researching on the effectiveness of such "animated balloon captions", which in my case are used in purely visual instructional animations (i.e., no sound or voice narration). I have compared captions versions with words-only, pictures plus words and motion pictures-only. The results suggests that motion pictures-only captions are far better (i.e., mistakes, completion time and transfer of learning) than words-only versions. As we might expect picture plus words is also better than words-only caption, but not as dramatic as motion pictures-only version. I have already collected some literature about it, but I was wondering if you would know any research or recent trends on the design of animated captions. Any suggestion or insights will be appreciated. Thanks. -- Jos? de Souza PhD Student Department of Typography & Graphic Communication The University of Reading From d.sless at communication.org.au Tue Apr 1 11:22:43 2008 From: d.sless at communication.org.au (David Sless) Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2008 20:22:43 +1100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: re live testing In-Reply-To: <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> On 27/03/2008, at 9:10 PM, Rob Waller wrote: > It's also worth saying that as time progresses, the need to test > probably gets greater - a few years ago we were mostly designing > bills that had been rather primitive printouts, and the new designs > were always better than the old. Now, the redesign is quite likely > to be of a bill that has already been through the process, but now > needs updating because products or brands have changed. I think this is true. But with a caveat. Our long range monitoring of such documents shows that they deteriorate quite quickly in use, more so these days with the rapid product and branding changes that Rob mentions. In one of our recent published case histories, we found that a document we originally designed in 1988 had a fairly long life, but by 2003 it had deteriorated from its original excellent performance level to a level where only 42% of customers could use it at an acceptable level. The redesign brought the document up to an acceptable level, but within months of implementation we began to see some deterioration of performance. Mocking up alternative designs for testing, though, can be a real chore. Rob described part of the horror in this type of work > we had to format pages of itemised calls, and it was no one's > favourite task. Add to Rob's un-favourite tasks, the task we sometimes get: hand crafting multiple versions of the same document 'just to illustrate' what each variant will look like. Using software like Quark or InDesign to do this type of repetitive task can drive one to madness. Thankfully, some of the newer software used for driving these dynamic document systems allow for rapid modification and prototyping, saving us all from these horrible tasks. David -- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080401/73f9b0e5/attachment-0008.htm From ralexm at terra.com.br Tue Apr 1 17:39:58 2008 From: ralexm at terra.com.br (Ricardo Martins) Date: Tue, 01 Apr 2008 12:39:58 -0300 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: re live testing In-Reply-To: <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> Message-ID: <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080401/d4a1cc4f/attachment-0008.htm From d.sless at communication.org.au Wed Apr 2 00:43:27 2008 From: d.sless at communication.org.au (David Sless) Date: Wed, 2 Apr 2008 09:43:27 +1100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: re live testing In-Reply-To: <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> Message-ID: <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> On 02/04/2008, at 2:39 AM, Ricardo Martins wrote: > Fortunately, in the last versions, Indesign added some nice > resources to integrate dynamic data through simple databases or XML. > You can populate an TXT file with different data and Indesign loads > it and generate different versions of a document. They can be > printed, exported to PDF or imported by other softwares Thanks for that, Ricardo. I will pass that on to our studio and avoid the workers' compensation cases for work induced insanity. We are using the latest indesign and enjoying many of its features, but I hadn't thought of that. It's obviously there with xml. I just hadn't made the connection. David -- blog: www.communication.org.au/dsblog web: http://www.communication.org.au Professor David Sless BA MSc FRSA CEO ? Communication Research Institute ? ? helping people communicate with people ? Mobile: +61 (0)412 356 795 Phone: +61 (0)3 9489 8640 60 Park Street ? Fitzroy North ? Melbourne ? Australia ? 3068 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080402/f5ce55a0/attachment-0008.htm -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: CRI-lh-logo-col.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 1634 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080402/f5ce55a0/attachment-0008.jpg From ralexm at terra.com.br Wed Apr 2 01:14:17 2008 From: ralexm at terra.com.br (Ricardo Martins) Date: Tue, 01 Apr 2008 20:14:17 -0300 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: re live testing In-Reply-To: <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> Message-ID: <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080401/6c3c7736/attachment-0008.htm -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 1634 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080401/6c3c7736/attachment-0008.jpeg From p.stiff at reading.ac.uk Thu Apr 3 18:33:25 2008 From: p.stiff at reading.ac.uk (Paul Stiff) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 17:33:25 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> Message-ID: <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Today (3 April 2008) on BBC Radio 4?s consumer affairs programme, ?You and yours?, there was an item about ?small print?. This was prompted by Labour MP Nick Palmer?s recent proposal in (the UK) parliament of ?a Bill to make requirements regarding the minimum size of print in certain documents, including those relating to advertising and contracts ... The Bill's objective is ... to ensure that customers are reasonably able to read what [the terms and conditions in advertisements or contracts] say? On radio, the ?You and yours? presenter summarized the Bill?s practical proposal, a legal minimum size for the text of contractual offers, T&Cs, etc: ?at least two millimetres high or twelve point font size?. A speaker representing the Royal National Institute for the Blind then supported the proposal; he could read ?standard size print? only with a magnifying glass. He was followed by MP Nick Palmer, who began with a correction: ?a factual point, it?s two centimetres, rather than two millimetres?. A representative of the Direct Marketing Association was later asked by the Y&Y presenter: ?Would the industry be willing to print larger text, two centimetres high?? DMA person: ?Two centimetres is quite ...? [she was going to say ?large?, but was interrupted by:] Y&Y presenter: ?I?m so sorry, twelve point font size?. And there we leave them, all still a bit confused about how to describe the size of this stuff. [You can hear them via ?listen again? at: ] A point [ho-ho] about describing ?type size? on paper: Attempts to regulate this aspect of the appearance of published text can start with a generalized guideline (e.g., ?You should provide large print/Braille versions of all literature, such as menus, instructions, etc? or ?Large enough to be read by a person wearing spectacles?) but eventually they have to define in numeric terms what they mean by ?large? and ?small?. But most readers of this will know that some ?fonts? at ?twelve point size? look smaller than other ?fonts? at ?ten point size?. That is, bigger is sometimes smaller than smaller. And vice versa. This peculiarity is, of course, not confined to regulation and law. It arises any time anyone needs to make an objective description of this simple typographic dimension. It is possible to be objectively precise about size, but the people who would have to implement typographic-appearance regulations through a specification of some kind are often neither scientists nor even printers or designers. So it would probably be unhelpful to define size in terms such as, for example, degrees of visual angle subtended by the viewed object on the viewer?s retina at a given viewing distance. Anyway, people sometimes want to be able to measure ?type size?, in order to check it themselves and make comparisons. But they usually find it hard to do so. And whatever they measure, they often don?t find it easy to locate an equivalent -- to what they measured -- in the dialog box (formatting palette, whatever) of the software application that they use to produce the required ?large? (or ?small?) print. So, is there a solution to this (old) problem? Paul Stiff From brian at brianparkinson.co.uk Thu Apr 3 19:17:05 2008 From: brian at brianparkinson.co.uk (Brian Parkinson) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 18:17:05 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: <9A8A5853-BBF8-4A78-90EE-667C38F2AE45@brianparkinson.co.uk> Good to hear your voice again Paul. How are you? All well here - lots of work at the moment - some of it interesting. Hope to see you before too long Brian From brian at brianparkinson.co.uk Thu Apr 3 19:17:55 2008 From: brian at brianparkinson.co.uk (Brian Parkinson) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 18:17:55 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: This proposal needs to go further I think - readable type has to go hand in hand with clearly written text. If the content is impenetrable legalese, even 20cm lettering won't help people to understand it. Brian Parkinson On 3 Apr 2008, at April 3 5:33 pm, Paul Stiff wrote: > This was prompted by Labour MP Nick Palmer?s recent proposal in (the > UK) parliament of ?a Bill to make requirements regarding the minimum > size of print in certain documents, including those relating to > advertising and contracts ... The Bill's objective is ... to ensure > that customers are reasonably able to read what [the terms and > conditions in advertisements or contracts] say? From waarde at glo.be Thu Apr 3 20:52:31 2008 From: waarde at glo.be (Karel van der Waarde) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 20:52:31 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: Dear Paul, Brian, It remains a pleasant discussion. It might be worth splitting this issue into two: a. Determining if text can be read. I don't think there is any typesize that would 'enable people to read a text'. The typesize on medical package leaflets is frequently 'too small' for patients, but the same patients can read the back of a lottery ticket without any problems ... b. Developing regulations and laws. Some of the information about medicines must be a specific typesize. The EU-readability guideline states that package leaflets must be in a typsize of "8 point Didot". [I've got no idea why they use a Didot-unit, why they specify non-metric measurements, nor where the '8' came from.] But even with a specified typesize, it is very easy to make a text illegible. Just print 8 point text (or 20 point) in a pale yellow on a slightly off-white background and print every second word upside down and in reverse. Even a 'readability formula' wouldn't notice this ... Unfortunately, specifying a typesize in a regulation also means that it must be measurable. It is no good to state '12 point' if nobody is able to check if a printed text is really 12 points ... The only person who can really tell if a text can be read and understood is a reader. [Well trained and experienced designers can make a good guess, but it remains a guess.] I'm convinced that we have to ask a small number of readers to see if our guesses are correct or need to be modified. Technology has developed a little so we can actually provide most information in most sizes - on request. And that solves the regulatory problem as well. Any law in this area must make it obligatory to involve people (non-designers, readers, potential users) in the design process and ask them to use texts. The laws should simply ask for proof that 'a document enables people to act appropriately'. This proof should indicate which people should be enabled, which actions are relevant, and what appropriate levels of success are. If visually impaired people need to act, than the information must be supplied in a format that 'enables a visually impaired person to act appropriately'. Same for people who have difficulties reading English, or difficulties in reading at all. It's a serious shortcoming of the information design community that we have not been able to convince politicians in the last 30 years or so that graphic design literature is not really suitable as a base for legislation. It's a serious shortcoming of politicians that they still base regulations on the production of large quantities of identically printed paper sheets. Digital technology makes it relatively simple to provide information in several formats (large print, small print, sound), on screen and on paper, and in all required languages. It seems that the UK Parliament is again fighting against the wrong symptoms. They did the same in 1848 when they adopted the 'Nuisances removal and contagious diseases prevention act' that was based on the idea that cholera was caused by bad smells. Unfortunately, removing the bad smell did not protect against cholera. Dumping the waste in the Thames actually caused another 15.000 cholera-casualties in 1848 and 1849. In other words, if you look at 'small print' only, it is unlikely any law can 'ensure that customers are reasonably able to read what they say'. Removing 'small type' from all documents does not ensure that people are able to read what they say'. Involving people in the development process and providing information in all required formats might need to be considered. Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be >Today (3 April 2008) on BBC Radio 4?s consumer affairs programme,? >?You and yours?, there was an item about ?small print?. > >This was prompted by Labour MP Nick Palmer?s recent proposal in (the? >UK) parliament of ?a Bill to make requirements regarding the minimum? >size of print in certain documents, including those relating to? >advertising and contracts ... The Bill's objective is ... to ensure? >that customers are reasonably able to read what [the terms and? >conditions in advertisements or contracts] say? > >debtext/80226-0006.htm#08022642000680> > >On radio, the ?You and yours? presenter summarized the Bill?s? >practical proposal, a legal minimum size for the text of contractual? >offers, T&Cs, etc: ?at least two millimetres high or twelve point? >font size?. > >A speaker representing the Royal National Institute for the Blind? >then supported the proposal; he could read ?standard size print? only? >with a magnifying glass. > >He was followed by MP Nick Palmer, who began with a correction: ?a? >factual point, it?s two centimetres, rather than two millimetres?. > >A representative of the Direct Marketing Association was later asked? >by the Y&Y presenter: ?Would the industry be willing to print larger? >text, two centimetres high?? > >DMA person: ?Two centimetres is quite ...? > >[she was going to say ?large?, but was interrupted by:] > >Y&Y presenter: ?I?m so sorry, twelve point font size?. > >And there we leave them, all still a bit confused about how to? >describe the size of this stuff. [You can hear them via ?listen? >again? at: ] > >A point [ho-ho] about describing ?type size? on paper: > >Attempts to regulate this aspect of the appearance of published text? >can start with a generalized guideline (e.g., ?You should provide? >large print/Braille versions of all literature, such as menus,? >instructions, etc? or ?Large enough to be read by a person wearing? >spectacles?) but eventually they have to define in numeric terms what? >they mean by ?large? and ?small?. > >But most readers of this will know that some ?fonts? at ?twelve point? >size? look smaller than other ?fonts? at ?ten point size?. That is,? >bigger is sometimes smaller than smaller. And vice versa. > >This peculiarity is, of course, not confined to regulation and law.? >It arises any time anyone needs to make an objective description of? >this simple typographic dimension. > >It is possible to be objectively precise about size, but the people? >who would have to implement typographic-appearance regulations? >through a specification of some kind are often neither scientists nor? >even printers or designers. So it would probably be unhelpful to? >define size in terms such as, for example, degrees of visual angle? >subtended by the viewed object on the viewer?s retina at a given? >viewing distance. > >Anyway, people sometimes want to be able to measure ?type size?, in? >order to check it themselves and make comparisons. But they usually? >find it hard to do so. And whatever they measure, they often don?t? >find it easy to locate an equivalent -- to what they measured -- in? >the dialog box (formatting palette, whatever) of the software? >application that they use to produce the required ?large? (or? >?small?) print. > >So, is there a solution to this (old) problem? > >Paul Stiff From katie at raincharm.co.uk Thu Apr 3 21:17:26 2008 From: katie at raincharm.co.uk (Raincharm Communications Limited) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 20:17:26 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters reply Message-ID: <856FAC7F4D054E9BACABFF2503A89687@KatiePC> Hi Just read the post relating to the recent Radio 4 debate on font size and what should be set as a standard. As former publications and editorial manager at the Disability Rights Commission (DRC), I was involved in the writing and implementation of an overall publications strategy which included a style guide on font size, typeface and various other accessibility issues. When the DRC began we decided to set 14 point as a standard font size for all documents, excepting those in Easy Read (aimed at people with learning disabilities) which were set at 16 point. It was always quite a struggle convincing other organisations to do the same mainly due to the cost implications - bigger font size meaning more pages and therefore a higher cost. However, once the budget issues are taken out of the equation one is left with the simple fact that a 14 point font size is much clearer and easier to read. I do remember we struggled with maintaining this approach when buying ad space as the cost is so exorbitant in 14 point. Another bone of contention was font size of footnotes in lengthy research documents but we always stuck to our guns and it seemed to pay off! Now working as a consultant advising businesses and other organisations on how to make their information provision more accessible and inclusive, I do still recommend a 14 point font size. Surely it is more important to improve the quality and accessibility of a document for everyone, not only people with impairments but also those who may have low literacy skills or for whom English is not their first language. This approach only ends up benefiting everyone. Equality of opportunity and inclusivity can only be achieved if people commit to what is an exemplary standard ie what goes above and beyond the 'norm'. It is all about setting a precedent for best practice. Once this has been accepted as the standard then others will follow suit. Best Wishes Katie Grant Director Raincharm Communications Ltd Tel 07971 909007 Registered No. 6267862 VAT No. 913 3364 44 www.raincharm.co.uk -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080403/b76d2e33/attachment-0006.htm From conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk Thu Apr 3 22:57:24 2008 From: conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk (Conrad Taylor) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 21:57:24 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: Paul Stiff wrote, sagely and entertainingly: >Attempts to regulate this aspect of the appearance of published text? >can start with a generalized guideline (e.g., ?You should provide? >large print/Braille versions of all literature, such as menus,? >instructions, etc? or ?Large enough to be read by a person wearing? >spectacles?) but eventually they have to define in numeric terms what? >they mean by ?large? and ?small?. > >But most readers of this will know that some ?fonts? at ?twelve point? >size? look smaller than other ?fonts? at ?ten point size?. That is, >bigger is sometimes smaller than smaller. And vice versa. Since 12pt in one font may be either larger or smaller, more or less legible than 12pt in another font, the obvious answer for the unimaginative and unskilled legislator is to define not only the size, but the font itself. In the British context, I am sure this New Labour government would be very happy to define the specifications as Arial 14pt. They bow to Microsoft in much else, so why not this? This would cap Microsoft's success in getting approval from an exhausted international standards community for their OfficeOpen XML "standard". :-) Conrad -- From d.sless at communication.org.au Fri Apr 4 05:17:44 2008 From: d.sless at communication.org.au (David Sless) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 14:17:44 +1100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: Hi All, To underline and elaborate what Karel has said on this subject. The problem regulators face, put simply, is they don't have the necessary understanding of ID to come up with sensible regulation of information. This is made worse by that the fact (as Donald Rumsfeld might have put it) they don't know they don't know. At CRI we have been working on this problem for some time, with mixed success. You can see some of our efforts on this in our publications, and, as Karel knows because he has done a lot of work on it, we are working on something at the moment that will push the case for better training of regulators a bit further. But it is hard and largely unrewarding work. Most EU regulators with whom I have engaged on this subject regard me as 'unhelpful' and some refuse to attend conferences, if I am a speaker (mind you, I feel like that myself sometimes). The basic shift that needs to occur is from regulating content to regulating performance Put differently it's a matter of looking at ends rather than means. The end is readable text. As we all agree, regulating font size is a poor means of getting to that particular outcome. I could go on but? David -- blog: www.communication.org.au/dsblog web: http://www.communication.org.au -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080404/167a1d69/attachment-0006.htm From r.waller at reading.ac.uk Fri Apr 4 10:07:17 2008 From: r.waller at reading.ac.uk (Rob Waller) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 09:07:17 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: <31A43BA4-AA08-42C4-B663-B9C5CD61C158@reading.ac.uk> Can I add a couple of thoughts to the debate? There is undoubtedly a big problem of naive information design becoming enshrined in the law, and there are plenty of historical and current examples of this. However, as a profession we do need to respond to the kind of concerns the politicians are expressing. As an aside I don't believe the fact that 12pt is a vague definition is a big problem in practice - even 12pt Bembo would be more legible than what we get now. More to the point is that to print most terms of business in 12pt of any typeface would lead to acres of paper, and, as others have suggested, would not ensure they are read. Indeed customer research often shows people are intimidated by long documents, even when clearly written. I'm not convinced testing is a universal solution - fine for medicines information perhaps, where a highly regulated product is marketed over a period of time in a stable format, but many of the kind of documents this MP is talking about, which include newspaper advertisements and direct mail, are produced to fast timescales and may even be in personalised formats. I think it would be useful to explore a risk-based approach. This is effectively what legal departments in large organisations do when they assess documents before they go out. For example, in some cases they approve an abbreviated reference to 'terms and conditions apply' whereas in other cases they insist the full set is supplied. About three years ago we surveyed practice among mobile phone companies and found quite a wide range of strategies. As well as the two I've mentioned, we also found quite a common practice of summarising the most important terms of business in larger or bolder type - but you need some kind of risk assessment to tell you what is important. A risk-based approach means assessing each item and coming to a view about (a) the likelihood of it being misunderstood, (b) the likelihood of the eventuality it caters for actually happening, and (c) the potential damage to the customer (or indeed to the company's relationship with the customer, and its reputation) if it is misunderstood and the eventuality happens. The risk assessment process could be tested with customers, even if every document cannot be. An example of a low risk item might be the part of the contract that states that if the company is sold to another company, the contract will be transferred to the buyer without changes. Not an everyday occurrence, and not one that would bother most people so long as the service continues without material changes. A high risk item might be the penalties for early release from a contract, or how complaints are handled. Most of us would not mind, and would not be penalised for our laziness, if the very low risk items were in 5pt, or for that matter printed on a banana and fired into space. So long as the high risk items were prominent, legible and designed to be taken seriously. An anecdotal example of this is my own claim under insurance that I was sold by my water supplier to cover problems with drains. It turned out (deep in the small print) that if my drain went under someone else's land to reach the main sewer I was not covered. Yet this is the most common arrangement in the newly built town where I live. So almost no one here can actually claim under this policy. A risk assessment of this clause would have told them there is a very high risk of this eventuality, that it threatens the whole point of the policy, and therefore there is highly likely to be damage to the customer relationship. And to make sure it does damage their reputation in some small way, I will mention that the company is Anglian Water and the 'cover' is provided for them by Homeserve. Rob Waller -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080404/5337615e/attachment-0005.htm From teather at compuserve.com Fri Apr 4 10:18:42 2008 From: teather at compuserve.com (Jane Teather) Date: Fri, 04 Apr 2008 09:18:42 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters reply In-Reply-To: <856FAC7F4D054E9BACABFF2503A89687@KatiePC> References: <856FAC7F4D054E9BACABFF2503A89687@KatiePC> Message-ID: <47F5E462.4050503@compuserve.com> Just adding my voice to those of Karel and David ? this is immensely frustrating for those of us who work on information about medicines and healthcare. As we know, size in points is a very inexact predictor of actual type size, and there?s a huge amount more to legibility than just size. But regulators are ever keen to impose over-simplistic rules, even when these are based on ignorance. We get ridiculous situations where a leaflet has done very well in testing ? to the extent that respondents have spontaneously commented on the ?nice big type? ? but it is deemed unacceptable because, by regulatory standards, the type is too small. If we then reset the same text in a light, condensed font, tightening up the letterspacing, but making it 2 points ?larger?, then it will be fine! This is treating the whole process of diagnostic testing, and the people who need crucial information about their medicines, with contempt. Rather than just grumbling (though we certainly grumble a lot), we have sought to explain: for example, I took some time to respond in detail, complete with diagrams and examples, to one of their proposals, and David has mentioned his efforts. But regulators apparently don?t want to learn and understand; they simply want to make meaningless rules. They have, ominously, just discovered the term ?leading? ? goodness knows what senseless interpretation they will manage to put on it. The Radio 4 piece which Paul originally mentioned would have been hilarious were it not so scary in its implications. If we?re not careful, we really could find ourselves setting text 2 cm high (is that baseline-to-baseline, or x-height? I think we should be told). Regards Jane _______________________________ Jane Teather JET Documentation Services 54A Ferme Park Road London N4 4ED tel: +44 (0) 20 8348 9213 fax: +44 (0) 20 8374 0342 mobile: +44 (0) 7967 366 252 teather at compuserve.com Fellow of the Communication Research Institute http://www.communication.org.au > _________________ > From waarde at glo.be Fri Apr 4 11:42:01 2008 From: waarde at glo.be (Karel van der Waarde) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 11:42:01 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters reply In-Reply-To: <47F5E462.4050503@compuserve.com> References: <856FAC7F4D054E9BACABFF2503A89687@KatiePC> <47F5E462.4050503@compuserve.com> Message-ID: Dear all, Thanks for the reactions. How can we convince regulators and guideline writers that point sizes are not the most important factor when it comes to understanding texts? Two arguments: - 1 - If all documents would follow the 12 point or 14 point standard, would all these documents really be easier to understand? - 2 - Are all documents that use a smaller typesize more difficult to understand? [Most newspapers, novels, study books, webpages, magazines use a smaller typesize. Should all these be discarded as incomprehensible?] I think that it is necessary to focus on the 'understanding' and 'easy to read' criteria, and not on the pointsizes. The relation between the two is certainly not direct. Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be [One anecdote: The new 'Draft Readability guideline' for medicine leaflets in Europe states that the typesize must be at least 12 points. The text of these leaflets is determined by another law and cannot be made shorter. Following the guideline would therefore mean that the dimensions of these leaflets must increase. This would require larger medicine boxes. Even a small size increase - say 10% - of all boxes would mean that most pharmacies in Europe need to rebuild their shelves, and probably their premises, to store the same number of medicines. Unfortunately, the extra costs for larger paper leaflets and cardboard boxes, new folding machines, new stuffing machines, increased transport costs, and rebuilding storage facilities will be paid by all of us. The price of medicines and health-insurance simply goes up. It is even more unfortunate that the increase in typesize does not help to make medicine leaflets easier to read.] From jk at nqpaofu.com Fri Apr 4 12:24:11 2008 From: jk at nqpaofu.com (Jouke Kleerebezem) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 12:24:11 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: Paul's amusing reference and valid questions about readability regulation [should other factors such as kerning, paper quality, ink (color), font type be included?] of the _material_ text bring me to my question to this list's expert readership, for a current project in which the limit of readability is sought for artistic purpose: a hybrid book/pdf/online publication which aims to benefit of specific media qualities, in the mix. A pdf is zoom-able, a 2pt size text at 400+% reads from a screen and prints well. Web browsers scale text but not images. The book, well, is a book -- no need to again praise its superior intimacy and usability. But it needs a seperate reading device to zoom in it. My question is simple: in your experience, which combination of font, type size, ink color, paper quality gives the most extreme detail in the hands of a skilled off-set printer? Or in another printing technique, provided the result would be 'ink on paper'. Which material qualities would enlarge best under the magnifying glass? Artist James Lee Byars once showed me a 10x10mm piece of paper which had been printed on some Swiss mountain in a dust free room and under other 'perfect' conditions. I forgot how much words it contained but its type size was under 2pt for sure. Then we know about small type engraved rice grains, pin heads etc. I'd be interested in any reference to miniature (text) print and other fabrication/reproduction 'out there'. Like the miniature books exhibition at http://www.indiana.edu/~liblilly/miniatures/index.shtml Today we have the nano bible: http://popsci.typepad.com/popsci/2007/12/nanotech-squeez.html . With reading devices developing parallel to writing technologies, where will practical applications go? Jouke Kleerebezem nomanisanisland at wanadoo.fr -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080404/22b8ee3b/attachment-0005.htm From r.waller at reading.ac.uk Fri Apr 4 12:58:25 2008 From: r.waller at reading.ac.uk (Rob Waller) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 11:58:25 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: <68EA3006-3760-46F7-B1C5-F63C9AA7BFDD@reading.ac.uk> Jouke's post reminds me that what we call 'small print' in the UK, is known as 'fine print' in the USA. There the custom is apparently to print business contracts on Columbia iron presses, using hand-made rag paper, bound in the finest calfskin. Rob Waller -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080404/e69ae505/attachment-0005.htm From carina.andersson at mdh.se Fri Apr 4 13:03:54 2008 From: carina.andersson at mdh.se (Carina Andersson) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 13:03:54 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters reply In-Reply-To: References: <856FAC7F4D054E9BACABFF2503A89687@KatiePC> <47F5E462.4050503@compuserve.com> Message-ID: <80DAB1E7B9936448A084E71CC703AFF226EA81A200@MBXCLUSTER.mdh.local> Dear alla and Karel This discussion seems to be about legibility, readability and "reading value". Does an individual perceive a text, picture or form? Does an individual understand a specific text, picture or form? Does an individual have an interest in the text, picture or form? I see these three concepts as three communicative levels. They are different, but still dependent on each other. You need the first level, legibility, to reach a second level, readability and so on. All the best Carina Andersson PhD-Candidate in Information design School of Innovation, Design and Engineering M?lardalen University Box 325 SE-631 05 Eskilstuna Sweden Phone: +46 (0)16-15 36 89 Cellphone: +46 (0)73- 182 23 19 Fax: +46 (0)16-15 36 50 -----Ursprungligt meddelande----- Fr?n: infodesign-cafe-bounces at list.informationdesign.org [mailto:infodesign-cafe-bounces at list.informationdesign.org] F?r Karel van der Waarde Skickat: den 4 april 2008 11:42 Till: Discussions about information design ?mne: Re: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters reply Dear all, Thanks for the reactions. How can we convince regulators and guideline writers that point sizes are not the most important factor when it comes to understanding texts? Two arguments: - 1 - If all documents would follow the 12 point or 14 point standard, would all these documents really be easier to understand? - 2 - Are all documents that use a smaller typesize more difficult to understand? [Most newspapers, novels, study books, webpages, magazines use a smaller typesize. Should all these be discarded as incomprehensible?] I think that it is necessary to focus on the 'understanding' and 'easy to read' criteria, and not on the pointsizes. The relation between the two is certainly not direct. Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be [One anecdote: The new 'Draft Readability guideline' for medicine leaflets in Europe states that the typesize must be at least 12 points. The text of these leaflets is determined by another law and cannot be made shorter. Following the guideline would therefore mean that the dimensions of these leaflets must increase. This would require larger medicine boxes. Even a small size increase - say 10% - of all boxes would mean that most pharmacies in Europe need to rebuild their shelves, and probably their premises, to store the same number of medicines. Unfortunately, the extra costs for larger paper leaflets and cardboard boxes, new folding machines, new stuffing machines, increased transport costs, and rebuilding storage facilities will be paid by all of us. The price of medicines and health-insurance simply goes up. It is even more unfortunate that the increase in typesize does not help to make medicine leaflets easier to read.] ___________________________________________________________________ Use the following address to post a message to all subscribers: infodesign-cafe at list.informationdesign.org To subscribe, unsubscribe or change your options, visit: http://list.InformationDesign.org/mailman/listinfo/infodesign-cafe For all Information Design matters: http://InformationDesign.org Problems? Write to: InfoDesign-Cafe-Admin at list.InformationDesign.org ___________________________________________________________________ From SWANSONG at ecu.edu Fri Apr 4 14:31:56 2008 From: SWANSONG at ecu.edu (Swanson, Gunnar) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 08:31:56 -0400 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters reply References: <856FAC7F4D054E9BACABFF2503A89687@KatiePC> Message-ID: <556BA53FA6DBA14CBD1605F1735C0FEC76F460@ecufs9.intra.ecu.edu> I've been assuming that this was a discussion of some specific British or European regulatory action regarding some specific variety of text and I don't understand the context so I've stayed out of it. Sweeping statements about the benefits of type size for readability tend to lead to clumsy typesetting that is often more difficult to read than the smaller type it is meant to prevent. ICOGRADA does a monthly poll on its newsletter/website that makes me embarrassed to be a graphic designer. It is consistently inane, misleading, or just plain stupid. It's at http://www.icograda.org/feature/opinion_poll.htm This month's is perhaps the worst.: IS 12 POINT FONT LARGE ENOUGH? This weeks opinion poll comes from Samantha S. Sannella, the President of Design Exchange. Pet Peve: Small Font. I am guilty of it. We are guilty of it. It's in our newsletters, on our business cards and on many of our publications. Is 12 point font large enough? Personally, I type in 18 point font nowadays and change the font size before sending. When did 9, 10 or 11 point font become acceptable? Am I getting old? Actually, I tested my eyes recently and they were perfect, however, the doctor did not test my eye fatigue - which I believe contributes to my recent dislike of miniscule letters. Of course, I have a theory - Go Big or Go Home. Calling all graphic designers: let's go big. What is your take? Is 12 point font large enough? [radio button] I agree with Samantha, 12 point font is just too small! [radio button] I think that font size should be relative to the medium one is working with. [radio button] I think that 12 point font is completely adequate. ---------- I suggest 72 pt Franklin Gothic Demi in black ink on smooth 87% reflectance warm white paper for the following: WTF? It seems, however, that 18 point may be adequate for the following: No, Samantha. I am old. You are stupid. They are not the same. Gunnar ---------- Gunnar Swanson Design Office 1901 East 6th Street Greenville, North Carolina 27858 USA gunnar at gunnarswanson.com +1 252 258 7006 http://www.gunnarswanson.com at East Carolina University: swansong at ecu.edu +1 252 328 2839 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080404/ebb90bef/attachment-0005.htm From katie at raincharm.co.uk Fri Apr 4 15:21:11 2008 From: katie at raincharm.co.uk (Raincharm Communications Limited) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 14:21:11 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: reply to karel and others - size matters Message-ID: <294CEEAA08F045A2971A7B64E7321136@KatiePC> Hi I totally agree with Karel's comment on how it is the readability of the actual content which is the crucial element. It makes no difference how large a font is if the text is complex and poorly written. I also take the point on the ease of making text larger in electronic and digital formats. Despite all the developments in technology and providing information online in a variety of downloadable formats, people still demand print based materials for a lot of documents, particularly government departments launching research findings or new initiatives. I worked on several lengthy documents at the DRC which were supposed to be online only but ended up as expensive print versions. This is without mentioning some of the bilingual print documents which are printed in Welsh and English often running to over 200 pages in some cases. I'd be interested to hear from anyone who is working on easier to read documents. I have several years experience writing and designing Easy Read documents for people with learning disabilities a format which, to my knowledge, has never been applied to the production of patient information leaflets. There is a very real need to design information for the elderly/older people in an easier to read format and patient information leaflets would seem to require this approach. Other audiences who need to be considered are those for whom English is not their first language - migrant workers and asylum seekers/refugees. What information is available in an easier to read format for these people? Happy to share ideas with interested parties. Katie Raincharm Communications Ltd Tel 07971 909007 Registered No. 6267862 VAT No. 913 3364 44 www.raincharm.co.uk -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080404/695f867e/attachment-0005.htm From waarde at glo.be Fri Apr 4 19:29:13 2008 From: waarde at glo.be (Karel van der Waarde) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 19:29:13 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: <31A43BA4-AA08-42C4-B663-B9C5CD61C158@reading.ac.uk> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> <31A43BA4-AA08-42C4-B663-B9C5CD61C158@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: Rob, Thanks for your reply. >I'm not convinced testing is a universal solution - fine for >medicines information perhaps, where a highly regulated product is >marketed over a period of time in a stable format, but many of the >kind of documents this MP is talking about, which include newspaper >advertisements and direct mail, are produced to fast timescales and >may even be in personalised formats. The way the tests are applied to medicines at the moment is far from optimal and probably even detrimental. As Jane Teather mentioned: the results are often ignored or overruled by even more obscure guidelines. >I think it would be useful to explore a risk-based approach. This is >effectively what legal departments in large organisations do when >they assess documents before they go out. For example, in some cases >they approve an abbreviated reference to 'terms and conditions >apply' whereas in other cases they insist the full set is supplied. >About three years ago we surveyed practice among mobile phone >companies and found quite a wide range of strategies. As well as the >two I've mentioned, we also found quite a common practice of >summarising the most important terms of business in larger or bolder >type - but you need some kind of risk assessment to tell you what is >important. This is exactly what patients expect when I discuss alternatives to the current package leaflets, or when test-participants suggest improvements. It would be useful to have a 'creditcard size' card in each medicine box. On the front, it mentions the five or six most important things about a medicine. On the back, it mentions relevant websites, e-mail addresses, phone numbers, patient organizations and government websites. [This is not suitable for all medicines, but would cover approx 80%.] Unfortunately, this is illegal in Europe. The highest risk of poor documents seem to me: - financial costs - wasting energy and materials - wasting time (multiplied by the number of people who read texts) - increasing frustration (= negative fun) I guess that the first two would be of interest to politicians, the first three to companies, and all four to all of us. Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be From conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk Sun Apr 6 08:08:39 2008 From: conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk (Conrad Taylor) Date: Sun, 6 Apr 2008 07:08:39 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: "Bank upgrade excluding blind" Message-ID: May interest Cafe readers who work on the design of financial statements: > "Visually impaired customers of American Express say > they can no longer read their credit card statements > online. > > "In December Amex changed its format for UK statements > from HTML to Portable Document Format or PDF. > > "However, it failed to encode the new PDF documents so > they could be read by "screen readers," special > software used by blind or partially sighted people. Story in full at the BBC News website: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/moneybox/7332216.stm Conrad -- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080406/25974167/attachment-0003.htm From marconi2006 at googlemail.com Mon Apr 7 08:47:05 2008 From: marconi2006 at googlemail.com (Jose de Souza) Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2008 07:47:05 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Animated balloon captions Message-ID: Colleagues, I imagine that you have heard about a company called "Bubbleply.com", this web video-sharing service allows anyone to add various types of captions (i.e., comics balloon like frames embedded with text, pictures or films) to video. A video tutorial is available at http://www.bubbleply.com I am researching on the effectiveness of such "animated balloon captions", which in my case are used in purely visual instructional animations (i.e., no sound or voice narration). I have compared captions versions with words-only, pictures plus words and motion pictures-only. The results suggests that motion pictures-only captions are far better (i.e., mistakes, completion time and transfer of learning) than words-only versions. As we might expect picture plus words is also better than words-only caption, but not as dramatic as motion pictures-only version. I have already collected some literature about it, but I was wondering if you would know any research or recent trends on the design of animated captions. Any suggestion or insights will be appreciated. Thanks. -- Jos? de Souza PhD Student Department of Typography & Graphic Communication The University of Reading From d.sless at communication.org.au Tue Apr 1 11:22:43 2008 From: d.sless at communication.org.au (David Sless) Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2008 20:22:43 +1100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: re live testing In-Reply-To: <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> On 27/03/2008, at 9:10 PM, Rob Waller wrote: > It's also worth saying that as time progresses, the need to test > probably gets greater - a few years ago we were mostly designing > bills that had been rather primitive printouts, and the new designs > were always better than the old. Now, the redesign is quite likely > to be of a bill that has already been through the process, but now > needs updating because products or brands have changed. I think this is true. But with a caveat. Our long range monitoring of such documents shows that they deteriorate quite quickly in use, more so these days with the rapid product and branding changes that Rob mentions. In one of our recent published case histories, we found that a document we originally designed in 1988 had a fairly long life, but by 2003 it had deteriorated from its original excellent performance level to a level where only 42% of customers could use it at an acceptable level. The redesign brought the document up to an acceptable level, but within months of implementation we began to see some deterioration of performance. Mocking up alternative designs for testing, though, can be a real chore. Rob described part of the horror in this type of work > we had to format pages of itemised calls, and it was no one's > favourite task. Add to Rob's un-favourite tasks, the task we sometimes get: hand crafting multiple versions of the same document 'just to illustrate' what each variant will look like. Using software like Quark or InDesign to do this type of repetitive task can drive one to madness. Thankfully, some of the newer software used for driving these dynamic document systems allow for rapid modification and prototyping, saving us all from these horrible tasks. David -- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080401/73f9b0e5/attachment-0009.htm From ralexm at terra.com.br Tue Apr 1 17:39:58 2008 From: ralexm at terra.com.br (Ricardo Martins) Date: Tue, 01 Apr 2008 12:39:58 -0300 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: re live testing In-Reply-To: <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> Message-ID: <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080401/d4a1cc4f/attachment-0009.htm From d.sless at communication.org.au Wed Apr 2 00:43:27 2008 From: d.sless at communication.org.au (David Sless) Date: Wed, 2 Apr 2008 09:43:27 +1100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: re live testing In-Reply-To: <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> Message-ID: <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> On 02/04/2008, at 2:39 AM, Ricardo Martins wrote: > Fortunately, in the last versions, Indesign added some nice > resources to integrate dynamic data through simple databases or XML. > You can populate an TXT file with different data and Indesign loads > it and generate different versions of a document. They can be > printed, exported to PDF or imported by other softwares Thanks for that, Ricardo. I will pass that on to our studio and avoid the workers' compensation cases for work induced insanity. We are using the latest indesign and enjoying many of its features, but I hadn't thought of that. It's obviously there with xml. I just hadn't made the connection. David -- blog: www.communication.org.au/dsblog web: http://www.communication.org.au Professor David Sless BA MSc FRSA CEO ? Communication Research Institute ? ? helping people communicate with people ? Mobile: +61 (0)412 356 795 Phone: +61 (0)3 9489 8640 60 Park Street ? Fitzroy North ? Melbourne ? Australia ? 3068 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080402/f5ce55a0/attachment-0009.htm -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: CRI-lh-logo-col.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 1634 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080402/f5ce55a0/attachment-0009.jpg From ralexm at terra.com.br Wed Apr 2 01:14:17 2008 From: ralexm at terra.com.br (Ricardo Martins) Date: Tue, 01 Apr 2008 20:14:17 -0300 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: re live testing In-Reply-To: <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> Message-ID: <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080401/6c3c7736/attachment-0009.htm -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 1634 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080401/6c3c7736/attachment-0009.jpeg From p.stiff at reading.ac.uk Thu Apr 3 18:33:25 2008 From: p.stiff at reading.ac.uk (Paul Stiff) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 17:33:25 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> Message-ID: <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Today (3 April 2008) on BBC Radio 4?s consumer affairs programme, ?You and yours?, there was an item about ?small print?. This was prompted by Labour MP Nick Palmer?s recent proposal in (the UK) parliament of ?a Bill to make requirements regarding the minimum size of print in certain documents, including those relating to advertising and contracts ... The Bill's objective is ... to ensure that customers are reasonably able to read what [the terms and conditions in advertisements or contracts] say? On radio, the ?You and yours? presenter summarized the Bill?s practical proposal, a legal minimum size for the text of contractual offers, T&Cs, etc: ?at least two millimetres high or twelve point font size?. A speaker representing the Royal National Institute for the Blind then supported the proposal; he could read ?standard size print? only with a magnifying glass. He was followed by MP Nick Palmer, who began with a correction: ?a factual point, it?s two centimetres, rather than two millimetres?. A representative of the Direct Marketing Association was later asked by the Y&Y presenter: ?Would the industry be willing to print larger text, two centimetres high?? DMA person: ?Two centimetres is quite ...? [she was going to say ?large?, but was interrupted by:] Y&Y presenter: ?I?m so sorry, twelve point font size?. And there we leave them, all still a bit confused about how to describe the size of this stuff. [You can hear them via ?listen again? at: ] A point [ho-ho] about describing ?type size? on paper: Attempts to regulate this aspect of the appearance of published text can start with a generalized guideline (e.g., ?You should provide large print/Braille versions of all literature, such as menus, instructions, etc? or ?Large enough to be read by a person wearing spectacles?) but eventually they have to define in numeric terms what they mean by ?large? and ?small?. But most readers of this will know that some ?fonts? at ?twelve point size? look smaller than other ?fonts? at ?ten point size?. That is, bigger is sometimes smaller than smaller. And vice versa. This peculiarity is, of course, not confined to regulation and law. It arises any time anyone needs to make an objective description of this simple typographic dimension. It is possible to be objectively precise about size, but the people who would have to implement typographic-appearance regulations through a specification of some kind are often neither scientists nor even printers or designers. So it would probably be unhelpful to define size in terms such as, for example, degrees of visual angle subtended by the viewed object on the viewer?s retina at a given viewing distance. Anyway, people sometimes want to be able to measure ?type size?, in order to check it themselves and make comparisons. But they usually find it hard to do so. And whatever they measure, they often don?t find it easy to locate an equivalent -- to what they measured -- in the dialog box (formatting palette, whatever) of the software application that they use to produce the required ?large? (or ?small?) print. So, is there a solution to this (old) problem? Paul Stiff From brian at brianparkinson.co.uk Thu Apr 3 19:17:05 2008 From: brian at brianparkinson.co.uk (Brian Parkinson) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 18:17:05 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: <9A8A5853-BBF8-4A78-90EE-667C38F2AE45@brianparkinson.co.uk> Good to hear your voice again Paul. How are you? All well here - lots of work at the moment - some of it interesting. Hope to see you before too long Brian From brian at brianparkinson.co.uk Thu Apr 3 19:17:55 2008 From: brian at brianparkinson.co.uk (Brian Parkinson) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 18:17:55 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: This proposal needs to go further I think - readable type has to go hand in hand with clearly written text. If the content is impenetrable legalese, even 20cm lettering won't help people to understand it. Brian Parkinson On 3 Apr 2008, at April 3 5:33 pm, Paul Stiff wrote: > This was prompted by Labour MP Nick Palmer?s recent proposal in (the > UK) parliament of ?a Bill to make requirements regarding the minimum > size of print in certain documents, including those relating to > advertising and contracts ... The Bill's objective is ... to ensure > that customers are reasonably able to read what [the terms and > conditions in advertisements or contracts] say? From waarde at glo.be Thu Apr 3 20:52:31 2008 From: waarde at glo.be (Karel van der Waarde) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 20:52:31 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: Dear Paul, Brian, It remains a pleasant discussion. It might be worth splitting this issue into two: a. Determining if text can be read. I don't think there is any typesize that would 'enable people to read a text'. The typesize on medical package leaflets is frequently 'too small' for patients, but the same patients can read the back of a lottery ticket without any problems ... b. Developing regulations and laws. Some of the information about medicines must be a specific typesize. The EU-readability guideline states that package leaflets must be in a typsize of "8 point Didot". [I've got no idea why they use a Didot-unit, why they specify non-metric measurements, nor where the '8' came from.] But even with a specified typesize, it is very easy to make a text illegible. Just print 8 point text (or 20 point) in a pale yellow on a slightly off-white background and print every second word upside down and in reverse. Even a 'readability formula' wouldn't notice this ... Unfortunately, specifying a typesize in a regulation also means that it must be measurable. It is no good to state '12 point' if nobody is able to check if a printed text is really 12 points ... The only person who can really tell if a text can be read and understood is a reader. [Well trained and experienced designers can make a good guess, but it remains a guess.] I'm convinced that we have to ask a small number of readers to see if our guesses are correct or need to be modified. Technology has developed a little so we can actually provide most information in most sizes - on request. And that solves the regulatory problem as well. Any law in this area must make it obligatory to involve people (non-designers, readers, potential users) in the design process and ask them to use texts. The laws should simply ask for proof that 'a document enables people to act appropriately'. This proof should indicate which people should be enabled, which actions are relevant, and what appropriate levels of success are. If visually impaired people need to act, than the information must be supplied in a format that 'enables a visually impaired person to act appropriately'. Same for people who have difficulties reading English, or difficulties in reading at all. It's a serious shortcoming of the information design community that we have not been able to convince politicians in the last 30 years or so that graphic design literature is not really suitable as a base for legislation. It's a serious shortcoming of politicians that they still base regulations on the production of large quantities of identically printed paper sheets. Digital technology makes it relatively simple to provide information in several formats (large print, small print, sound), on screen and on paper, and in all required languages. It seems that the UK Parliament is again fighting against the wrong symptoms. They did the same in 1848 when they adopted the 'Nuisances removal and contagious diseases prevention act' that was based on the idea that cholera was caused by bad smells. Unfortunately, removing the bad smell did not protect against cholera. Dumping the waste in the Thames actually caused another 15.000 cholera-casualties in 1848 and 1849. In other words, if you look at 'small print' only, it is unlikely any law can 'ensure that customers are reasonably able to read what they say'. Removing 'small type' from all documents does not ensure that people are able to read what they say'. Involving people in the development process and providing information in all required formats might need to be considered. Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be >Today (3 April 2008) on BBC Radio 4?s consumer affairs programme,? >?You and yours?, there was an item about ?small print?. > >This was prompted by Labour MP Nick Palmer?s recent proposal in (the? >UK) parliament of ?a Bill to make requirements regarding the minimum? >size of print in certain documents, including those relating to? >advertising and contracts ... The Bill's objective is ... to ensure? >that customers are reasonably able to read what [the terms and? >conditions in advertisements or contracts] say? > >debtext/80226-0006.htm#08022642000680> > >On radio, the ?You and yours? presenter summarized the Bill?s? >practical proposal, a legal minimum size for the text of contractual? >offers, T&Cs, etc: ?at least two millimetres high or twelve point? >font size?. > >A speaker representing the Royal National Institute for the Blind? >then supported the proposal; he could read ?standard size print? only? >with a magnifying glass. > >He was followed by MP Nick Palmer, who began with a correction: ?a? >factual point, it?s two centimetres, rather than two millimetres?. > >A representative of the Direct Marketing Association was later asked? >by the Y&Y presenter: ?Would the industry be willing to print larger? >text, two centimetres high?? > >DMA person: ?Two centimetres is quite ...? > >[she was going to say ?large?, but was interrupted by:] > >Y&Y presenter: ?I?m so sorry, twelve point font size?. > >And there we leave them, all still a bit confused about how to? >describe the size of this stuff. [You can hear them via ?listen? >again? at: ] > >A point [ho-ho] about describing ?type size? on paper: > >Attempts to regulate this aspect of the appearance of published text? >can start with a generalized guideline (e.g., ?You should provide? >large print/Braille versions of all literature, such as menus,? >instructions, etc? or ?Large enough to be read by a person wearing? >spectacles?) but eventually they have to define in numeric terms what? >they mean by ?large? and ?small?. > >But most readers of this will know that some ?fonts? at ?twelve point? >size? look smaller than other ?fonts? at ?ten point size?. That is,? >bigger is sometimes smaller than smaller. And vice versa. > >This peculiarity is, of course, not confined to regulation and law.? >It arises any time anyone needs to make an objective description of? >this simple typographic dimension. > >It is possible to be objectively precise about size, but the people? >who would have to implement typographic-appearance regulations? >through a specification of some kind are often neither scientists nor? >even printers or designers. So it would probably be unhelpful to? >define size in terms such as, for example, degrees of visual angle? >subtended by the viewed object on the viewer?s retina at a given? >viewing distance. > >Anyway, people sometimes want to be able to measure ?type size?, in? >order to check it themselves and make comparisons. But they usually? >find it hard to do so. And whatever they measure, they often don?t? >find it easy to locate an equivalent -- to what they measured -- in? >the dialog box (formatting palette, whatever) of the software? >application that they use to produce the required ?large? (or? >?small?) print. > >So, is there a solution to this (old) problem? > >Paul Stiff From katie at raincharm.co.uk Thu Apr 3 21:17:26 2008 From: katie at raincharm.co.uk (Raincharm Communications Limited) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 20:17:26 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters reply Message-ID: <856FAC7F4D054E9BACABFF2503A89687@KatiePC> Hi Just read the post relating to the recent Radio 4 debate on font size and what should be set as a standard. As former publications and editorial manager at the Disability Rights Commission (DRC), I was involved in the writing and implementation of an overall publications strategy which included a style guide on font size, typeface and various other accessibility issues. When the DRC began we decided to set 14 point as a standard font size for all documents, excepting those in Easy Read (aimed at people with learning disabilities) which were set at 16 point. It was always quite a struggle convincing other organisations to do the same mainly due to the cost implications - bigger font size meaning more pages and therefore a higher cost. However, once the budget issues are taken out of the equation one is left with the simple fact that a 14 point font size is much clearer and easier to read. I do remember we struggled with maintaining this approach when buying ad space as the cost is so exorbitant in 14 point. Another bone of contention was font size of footnotes in lengthy research documents but we always stuck to our guns and it seemed to pay off! Now working as a consultant advising businesses and other organisations on how to make their information provision more accessible and inclusive, I do still recommend a 14 point font size. Surely it is more important to improve the quality and accessibility of a document for everyone, not only people with impairments but also those who may have low literacy skills or for whom English is not their first language. This approach only ends up benefiting everyone. Equality of opportunity and inclusivity can only be achieved if people commit to what is an exemplary standard ie what goes above and beyond the 'norm'. It is all about setting a precedent for best practice. Once this has been accepted as the standard then others will follow suit. Best Wishes Katie Grant Director Raincharm Communications Ltd Tel 07971 909007 Registered No. 6267862 VAT No. 913 3364 44 www.raincharm.co.uk -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080403/b76d2e33/attachment-0007.htm From conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk Thu Apr 3 22:57:24 2008 From: conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk (Conrad Taylor) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 21:57:24 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: Paul Stiff wrote, sagely and entertainingly: >Attempts to regulate this aspect of the appearance of published text? >can start with a generalized guideline (e.g., ?You should provide? >large print/Braille versions of all literature, such as menus,? >instructions, etc? or ?Large enough to be read by a person wearing? >spectacles?) but eventually they have to define in numeric terms what? >they mean by ?large? and ?small?. > >But most readers of this will know that some ?fonts? at ?twelve point? >size? look smaller than other ?fonts? at ?ten point size?. That is, >bigger is sometimes smaller than smaller. And vice versa. Since 12pt in one font may be either larger or smaller, more or less legible than 12pt in another font, the obvious answer for the unimaginative and unskilled legislator is to define not only the size, but the font itself. In the British context, I am sure this New Labour government would be very happy to define the specifications as Arial 14pt. They bow to Microsoft in much else, so why not this? This would cap Microsoft's success in getting approval from an exhausted international standards community for their OfficeOpen XML "standard". :-) Conrad -- From d.sless at communication.org.au Fri Apr 4 05:17:44 2008 From: d.sless at communication.org.au (David Sless) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 14:17:44 +1100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: Hi All, To underline and elaborate what Karel has said on this subject. The problem regulators face, put simply, is they don't have the necessary understanding of ID to come up with sensible regulation of information. This is made worse by that the fact (as Donald Rumsfeld might have put it) they don't know they don't know. At CRI we have been working on this problem for some time, with mixed success. You can see some of our efforts on this in our publications, and, as Karel knows because he has done a lot of work on it, we are working on something at the moment that will push the case for better training of regulators a bit further. But it is hard and largely unrewarding work. Most EU regulators with whom I have engaged on this subject regard me as 'unhelpful' and some refuse to attend conferences, if I am a speaker (mind you, I feel like that myself sometimes). The basic shift that needs to occur is from regulating content to regulating performance Put differently it's a matter of looking at ends rather than means. The end is readable text. As we all agree, regulating font size is a poor means of getting to that particular outcome. I could go on but? David -- blog: www.communication.org.au/dsblog web: http://www.communication.org.au -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080404/167a1d69/attachment-0007.htm From r.waller at reading.ac.uk Fri Apr 4 10:07:17 2008 From: r.waller at reading.ac.uk (Rob Waller) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 09:07:17 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: <31A43BA4-AA08-42C4-B663-B9C5CD61C158@reading.ac.uk> Can I add a couple of thoughts to the debate? There is undoubtedly a big problem of naive information design becoming enshrined in the law, and there are plenty of historical and current examples of this. However, as a profession we do need to respond to the kind of concerns the politicians are expressing. As an aside I don't believe the fact that 12pt is a vague definition is a big problem in practice - even 12pt Bembo would be more legible than what we get now. More to the point is that to print most terms of business in 12pt of any typeface would lead to acres of paper, and, as others have suggested, would not ensure they are read. Indeed customer research often shows people are intimidated by long documents, even when clearly written. I'm not convinced testing is a universal solution - fine for medicines information perhaps, where a highly regulated product is marketed over a period of time in a stable format, but many of the kind of documents this MP is talking about, which include newspaper advertisements and direct mail, are produced to fast timescales and may even be in personalised formats. I think it would be useful to explore a risk-based approach. This is effectively what legal departments in large organisations do when they assess documents before they go out. For example, in some cases they approve an abbreviated reference to 'terms and conditions apply' whereas in other cases they insist the full set is supplied. About three years ago we surveyed practice among mobile phone companies and found quite a wide range of strategies. As well as the two I've mentioned, we also found quite a common practice of summarising the most important terms of business in larger or bolder type - but you need some kind of risk assessment to tell you what is important. A risk-based approach means assessing each item and coming to a view about (a) the likelihood of it being misunderstood, (b) the likelihood of the eventuality it caters for actually happening, and (c) the potential damage to the customer (or indeed to the company's relationship with the customer, and its reputation) if it is misunderstood and the eventuality happens. The risk assessment process could be tested with customers, even if every document cannot be. An example of a low risk item might be the part of the contract that states that if the company is sold to another company, the contract will be transferred to the buyer without changes. Not an everyday occurrence, and not one that would bother most people so long as the service continues without material changes. A high risk item might be the penalties for early release from a contract, or how complaints are handled. Most of us would not mind, and would not be penalised for our laziness, if the very low risk items were in 5pt, or for that matter printed on a banana and fired into space. So long as the high risk items were prominent, legible and designed to be taken seriously. An anecdotal example of this is my own claim under insurance that I was sold by my water supplier to cover problems with drains. It turned out (deep in the small print) that if my drain went under someone else's land to reach the main sewer I was not covered. Yet this is the most common arrangement in the newly built town where I live. So almost no one here can actually claim under this policy. A risk assessment of this clause would have told them there is a very high risk of this eventuality, that it threatens the whole point of the policy, and therefore there is highly likely to be damage to the customer relationship. And to make sure it does damage their reputation in some small way, I will mention that the company is Anglian Water and the 'cover' is provided for them by Homeserve. Rob Waller -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080404/5337615e/attachment-0006.htm From teather at compuserve.com Fri Apr 4 10:18:42 2008 From: teather at compuserve.com (Jane Teather) Date: Fri, 04 Apr 2008 09:18:42 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters reply In-Reply-To: <856FAC7F4D054E9BACABFF2503A89687@KatiePC> References: <856FAC7F4D054E9BACABFF2503A89687@KatiePC> Message-ID: <47F5E462.4050503@compuserve.com> Just adding my voice to those of Karel and David ? this is immensely frustrating for those of us who work on information about medicines and healthcare. As we know, size in points is a very inexact predictor of actual type size, and there?s a huge amount more to legibility than just size. But regulators are ever keen to impose over-simplistic rules, even when these are based on ignorance. We get ridiculous situations where a leaflet has done very well in testing ? to the extent that respondents have spontaneously commented on the ?nice big type? ? but it is deemed unacceptable because, by regulatory standards, the type is too small. If we then reset the same text in a light, condensed font, tightening up the letterspacing, but making it 2 points ?larger?, then it will be fine! This is treating the whole process of diagnostic testing, and the people who need crucial information about their medicines, with contempt. Rather than just grumbling (though we certainly grumble a lot), we have sought to explain: for example, I took some time to respond in detail, complete with diagrams and examples, to one of their proposals, and David has mentioned his efforts. But regulators apparently don?t want to learn and understand; they simply want to make meaningless rules. They have, ominously, just discovered the term ?leading? ? goodness knows what senseless interpretation they will manage to put on it. The Radio 4 piece which Paul originally mentioned would have been hilarious were it not so scary in its implications. If we?re not careful, we really could find ourselves setting text 2 cm high (is that baseline-to-baseline, or x-height? I think we should be told). Regards Jane _______________________________ Jane Teather JET Documentation Services 54A Ferme Park Road London N4 4ED tel: +44 (0) 20 8348 9213 fax: +44 (0) 20 8374 0342 mobile: +44 (0) 7967 366 252 teather at compuserve.com Fellow of the Communication Research Institute http://www.communication.org.au > _________________ > From waarde at glo.be Fri Apr 4 11:42:01 2008 From: waarde at glo.be (Karel van der Waarde) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 11:42:01 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters reply In-Reply-To: <47F5E462.4050503@compuserve.com> References: <856FAC7F4D054E9BACABFF2503A89687@KatiePC> <47F5E462.4050503@compuserve.com> Message-ID: Dear all, Thanks for the reactions. How can we convince regulators and guideline writers that point sizes are not the most important factor when it comes to understanding texts? Two arguments: - 1 - If all documents would follow the 12 point or 14 point standard, would all these documents really be easier to understand? - 2 - Are all documents that use a smaller typesize more difficult to understand? [Most newspapers, novels, study books, webpages, magazines use a smaller typesize. Should all these be discarded as incomprehensible?] I think that it is necessary to focus on the 'understanding' and 'easy to read' criteria, and not on the pointsizes. The relation between the two is certainly not direct. Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be [One anecdote: The new 'Draft Readability guideline' for medicine leaflets in Europe states that the typesize must be at least 12 points. The text of these leaflets is determined by another law and cannot be made shorter. Following the guideline would therefore mean that the dimensions of these leaflets must increase. This would require larger medicine boxes. Even a small size increase - say 10% - of all boxes would mean that most pharmacies in Europe need to rebuild their shelves, and probably their premises, to store the same number of medicines. Unfortunately, the extra costs for larger paper leaflets and cardboard boxes, new folding machines, new stuffing machines, increased transport costs, and rebuilding storage facilities will be paid by all of us. The price of medicines and health-insurance simply goes up. It is even more unfortunate that the increase in typesize does not help to make medicine leaflets easier to read.] From jk at nqpaofu.com Fri Apr 4 12:24:11 2008 From: jk at nqpaofu.com (Jouke Kleerebezem) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 12:24:11 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: Paul's amusing reference and valid questions about readability regulation [should other factors such as kerning, paper quality, ink (color), font type be included?] of the _material_ text bring me to my question to this list's expert readership, for a current project in which the limit of readability is sought for artistic purpose: a hybrid book/pdf/online publication which aims to benefit of specific media qualities, in the mix. A pdf is zoom-able, a 2pt size text at 400+% reads from a screen and prints well. Web browsers scale text but not images. The book, well, is a book -- no need to again praise its superior intimacy and usability. But it needs a seperate reading device to zoom in it. My question is simple: in your experience, which combination of font, type size, ink color, paper quality gives the most extreme detail in the hands of a skilled off-set printer? Or in another printing technique, provided the result would be 'ink on paper'. Which material qualities would enlarge best under the magnifying glass? Artist James Lee Byars once showed me a 10x10mm piece of paper which had been printed on some Swiss mountain in a dust free room and under other 'perfect' conditions. I forgot how much words it contained but its type size was under 2pt for sure. Then we know about small type engraved rice grains, pin heads etc. I'd be interested in any reference to miniature (text) print and other fabrication/reproduction 'out there'. Like the miniature books exhibition at http://www.indiana.edu/~liblilly/miniatures/index.shtml Today we have the nano bible: http://popsci.typepad.com/popsci/2007/12/nanotech-squeez.html . With reading devices developing parallel to writing technologies, where will practical applications go? Jouke Kleerebezem nomanisanisland at wanadoo.fr -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080404/22b8ee3b/attachment-0006.htm From r.waller at reading.ac.uk Fri Apr 4 12:58:25 2008 From: r.waller at reading.ac.uk (Rob Waller) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 11:58:25 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: <68EA3006-3760-46F7-B1C5-F63C9AA7BFDD@reading.ac.uk> Jouke's post reminds me that what we call 'small print' in the UK, is known as 'fine print' in the USA. There the custom is apparently to print business contracts on Columbia iron presses, using hand-made rag paper, bound in the finest calfskin. Rob Waller -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080404/e69ae505/attachment-0006.htm From carina.andersson at mdh.se Fri Apr 4 13:03:54 2008 From: carina.andersson at mdh.se (Carina Andersson) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 13:03:54 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters reply In-Reply-To: References: <856FAC7F4D054E9BACABFF2503A89687@KatiePC> <47F5E462.4050503@compuserve.com> Message-ID: <80DAB1E7B9936448A084E71CC703AFF226EA81A200@MBXCLUSTER.mdh.local> Dear alla and Karel This discussion seems to be about legibility, readability and "reading value". Does an individual perceive a text, picture or form? Does an individual understand a specific text, picture or form? Does an individual have an interest in the text, picture or form? I see these three concepts as three communicative levels. They are different, but still dependent on each other. You need the first level, legibility, to reach a second level, readability and so on. All the best Carina Andersson PhD-Candidate in Information design School of Innovation, Design and Engineering M?lardalen University Box 325 SE-631 05 Eskilstuna Sweden Phone: +46 (0)16-15 36 89 Cellphone: +46 (0)73- 182 23 19 Fax: +46 (0)16-15 36 50 -----Ursprungligt meddelande----- Fr?n: infodesign-cafe-bounces at list.informationdesign.org [mailto:infodesign-cafe-bounces at list.informationdesign.org] F?r Karel van der Waarde Skickat: den 4 april 2008 11:42 Till: Discussions about information design ?mne: Re: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters reply Dear all, Thanks for the reactions. How can we convince regulators and guideline writers that point sizes are not the most important factor when it comes to understanding texts? Two arguments: - 1 - If all documents would follow the 12 point or 14 point standard, would all these documents really be easier to understand? - 2 - Are all documents that use a smaller typesize more difficult to understand? [Most newspapers, novels, study books, webpages, magazines use a smaller typesize. Should all these be discarded as incomprehensible?] I think that it is necessary to focus on the 'understanding' and 'easy to read' criteria, and not on the pointsizes. The relation between the two is certainly not direct. Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be [One anecdote: The new 'Draft Readability guideline' for medicine leaflets in Europe states that the typesize must be at least 12 points. The text of these leaflets is determined by another law and cannot be made shorter. Following the guideline would therefore mean that the dimensions of these leaflets must increase. This would require larger medicine boxes. Even a small size increase - say 10% - of all boxes would mean that most pharmacies in Europe need to rebuild their shelves, and probably their premises, to store the same number of medicines. Unfortunately, the extra costs for larger paper leaflets and cardboard boxes, new folding machines, new stuffing machines, increased transport costs, and rebuilding storage facilities will be paid by all of us. The price of medicines and health-insurance simply goes up. It is even more unfortunate that the increase in typesize does not help to make medicine leaflets easier to read.] ___________________________________________________________________ Use the following address to post a message to all subscribers: infodesign-cafe at list.informationdesign.org To subscribe, unsubscribe or change your options, visit: http://list.InformationDesign.org/mailman/listinfo/infodesign-cafe For all Information Design matters: http://InformationDesign.org Problems? Write to: InfoDesign-Cafe-Admin at list.InformationDesign.org ___________________________________________________________________ From SWANSONG at ecu.edu Fri Apr 4 14:31:56 2008 From: SWANSONG at ecu.edu (Swanson, Gunnar) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 08:31:56 -0400 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters reply References: <856FAC7F4D054E9BACABFF2503A89687@KatiePC> Message-ID: <556BA53FA6DBA14CBD1605F1735C0FEC76F460@ecufs9.intra.ecu.edu> I've been assuming that this was a discussion of some specific British or European regulatory action regarding some specific variety of text and I don't understand the context so I've stayed out of it. Sweeping statements about the benefits of type size for readability tend to lead to clumsy typesetting that is often more difficult to read than the smaller type it is meant to prevent. ICOGRADA does a monthly poll on its newsletter/website that makes me embarrassed to be a graphic designer. It is consistently inane, misleading, or just plain stupid. It's at http://www.icograda.org/feature/opinion_poll.htm This month's is perhaps the worst.: IS 12 POINT FONT LARGE ENOUGH? This weeks opinion poll comes from Samantha S. Sannella, the President of Design Exchange. Pet Peve: Small Font. I am guilty of it. We are guilty of it. It's in our newsletters, on our business cards and on many of our publications. Is 12 point font large enough? Personally, I type in 18 point font nowadays and change the font size before sending. When did 9, 10 or 11 point font become acceptable? Am I getting old? Actually, I tested my eyes recently and they were perfect, however, the doctor did not test my eye fatigue - which I believe contributes to my recent dislike of miniscule letters. Of course, I have a theory - Go Big or Go Home. Calling all graphic designers: let's go big. What is your take? Is 12 point font large enough? [radio button] I agree with Samantha, 12 point font is just too small! [radio button] I think that font size should be relative to the medium one is working with. [radio button] I think that 12 point font is completely adequate. ---------- I suggest 72 pt Franklin Gothic Demi in black ink on smooth 87% reflectance warm white paper for the following: WTF? It seems, however, that 18 point may be adequate for the following: No, Samantha. I am old. You are stupid. They are not the same. Gunnar ---------- Gunnar Swanson Design Office 1901 East 6th Street Greenville, North Carolina 27858 USA gunnar at gunnarswanson.com +1 252 258 7006 http://www.gunnarswanson.com at East Carolina University: swansong at ecu.edu +1 252 328 2839 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080404/ebb90bef/attachment-0006.htm From katie at raincharm.co.uk Fri Apr 4 15:21:11 2008 From: katie at raincharm.co.uk (Raincharm Communications Limited) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 14:21:11 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: reply to karel and others - size matters Message-ID: <294CEEAA08F045A2971A7B64E7321136@KatiePC> Hi I totally agree with Karel's comment on how it is the readability of the actual content which is the crucial element. It makes no difference how large a font is if the text is complex and poorly written. I also take the point on the ease of making text larger in electronic and digital formats. Despite all the developments in technology and providing information online in a variety of downloadable formats, people still demand print based materials for a lot of documents, particularly government departments launching research findings or new initiatives. I worked on several lengthy documents at the DRC which were supposed to be online only but ended up as expensive print versions. This is without mentioning some of the bilingual print documents which are printed in Welsh and English often running to over 200 pages in some cases. I'd be interested to hear from anyone who is working on easier to read documents. I have several years experience writing and designing Easy Read documents for people with learning disabilities a format which, to my knowledge, has never been applied to the production of patient information leaflets. There is a very real need to design information for the elderly/older people in an easier to read format and patient information leaflets would seem to require this approach. Other audiences who need to be considered are those for whom English is not their first language - migrant workers and asylum seekers/refugees. What information is available in an easier to read format for these people? Happy to share ideas with interested parties. Katie Raincharm Communications Ltd Tel 07971 909007 Registered No. 6267862 VAT No. 913 3364 44 www.raincharm.co.uk -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080404/695f867e/attachment-0006.htm From waarde at glo.be Fri Apr 4 19:29:13 2008 From: waarde at glo.be (Karel van der Waarde) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 19:29:13 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: <31A43BA4-AA08-42C4-B663-B9C5CD61C158@reading.ac.uk> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> <31A43BA4-AA08-42C4-B663-B9C5CD61C158@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: Rob, Thanks for your reply. >I'm not convinced testing is a universal solution - fine for >medicines information perhaps, where a highly regulated product is >marketed over a period of time in a stable format, but many of the >kind of documents this MP is talking about, which include newspaper >advertisements and direct mail, are produced to fast timescales and >may even be in personalised formats. The way the tests are applied to medicines at the moment is far from optimal and probably even detrimental. As Jane Teather mentioned: the results are often ignored or overruled by even more obscure guidelines. >I think it would be useful to explore a risk-based approach. This is >effectively what legal departments in large organisations do when >they assess documents before they go out. For example, in some cases >they approve an abbreviated reference to 'terms and conditions >apply' whereas in other cases they insist the full set is supplied. >About three years ago we surveyed practice among mobile phone >companies and found quite a wide range of strategies. As well as the >two I've mentioned, we also found quite a common practice of >summarising the most important terms of business in larger or bolder >type - but you need some kind of risk assessment to tell you what is >important. This is exactly what patients expect when I discuss alternatives to the current package leaflets, or when test-participants suggest improvements. It would be useful to have a 'creditcard size' card in each medicine box. On the front, it mentions the five or six most important things about a medicine. On the back, it mentions relevant websites, e-mail addresses, phone numbers, patient organizations and government websites. [This is not suitable for all medicines, but would cover approx 80%.] Unfortunately, this is illegal in Europe. The highest risk of poor documents seem to me: - financial costs - wasting energy and materials - wasting time (multiplied by the number of people who read texts) - increasing frustration (= negative fun) I guess that the first two would be of interest to politicians, the first three to companies, and all four to all of us. Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be From conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk Sun Apr 6 08:08:39 2008 From: conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk (Conrad Taylor) Date: Sun, 6 Apr 2008 07:08:39 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: "Bank upgrade excluding blind" Message-ID: May interest Cafe readers who work on the design of financial statements: > "Visually impaired customers of American Express say > they can no longer read their credit card statements > online. > > "In December Amex changed its format for UK statements > from HTML to Portable Document Format or PDF. > > "However, it failed to encode the new PDF documents so > they could be read by "screen readers," special > software used by blind or partially sighted people. Story in full at the BBC News website: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/moneybox/7332216.stm Conrad -- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080406/25974167/attachment-0004.htm From marconi2006 at googlemail.com Mon Apr 7 08:47:05 2008 From: marconi2006 at googlemail.com (Jose de Souza) Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2008 07:47:05 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Animated balloon captions Message-ID: Colleagues, I imagine that you have heard about a company called "Bubbleply.com", this web video-sharing service allows anyone to add various types of captions (i.e., comics balloon like frames embedded with text, pictures or films) to video. A video tutorial is available at http://www.bubbleply.com I am researching on the effectiveness of such "animated balloon captions", which in my case are used in purely visual instructional animations (i.e., no sound or voice narration). I have compared captions versions with words-only, pictures plus words and motion pictures-only. The results suggests that motion pictures-only captions are far better (i.e., mistakes, completion time and transfer of learning) than words-only versions. As we might expect picture plus words is also better than words-only caption, but not as dramatic as motion pictures-only version. I have already collected some literature about it, but I was wondering if you would know any research or recent trends on the design of animated captions. Any suggestion or insights will be appreciated. Thanks. -- Jos? de Souza PhD Student Department of Typography & Graphic Communication The University of Reading From d.sless at communication.org.au Tue Apr 1 11:22:43 2008 From: d.sless at communication.org.au (David Sless) Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2008 20:22:43 +1100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: re live testing In-Reply-To: <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> On 27/03/2008, at 9:10 PM, Rob Waller wrote: > It's also worth saying that as time progresses, the need to test > probably gets greater - a few years ago we were mostly designing > bills that had been rather primitive printouts, and the new designs > were always better than the old. Now, the redesign is quite likely > to be of a bill that has already been through the process, but now > needs updating because products or brands have changed. I think this is true. But with a caveat. Our long range monitoring of such documents shows that they deteriorate quite quickly in use, more so these days with the rapid product and branding changes that Rob mentions. In one of our recent published case histories, we found that a document we originally designed in 1988 had a fairly long life, but by 2003 it had deteriorated from its original excellent performance level to a level where only 42% of customers could use it at an acceptable level. The redesign brought the document up to an acceptable level, but within months of implementation we began to see some deterioration of performance. Mocking up alternative designs for testing, though, can be a real chore. Rob described part of the horror in this type of work > we had to format pages of itemised calls, and it was no one's > favourite task. Add to Rob's un-favourite tasks, the task we sometimes get: hand crafting multiple versions of the same document 'just to illustrate' what each variant will look like. Using software like Quark or InDesign to do this type of repetitive task can drive one to madness. Thankfully, some of the newer software used for driving these dynamic document systems allow for rapid modification and prototyping, saving us all from these horrible tasks. David -- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080401/73f9b0e5/attachment-0010.htm From ralexm at terra.com.br Tue Apr 1 17:39:58 2008 From: ralexm at terra.com.br (Ricardo Martins) Date: Tue, 01 Apr 2008 12:39:58 -0300 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: re live testing In-Reply-To: <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> Message-ID: <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080401/d4a1cc4f/attachment-0010.htm From d.sless at communication.org.au Wed Apr 2 00:43:27 2008 From: d.sless at communication.org.au (David Sless) Date: Wed, 2 Apr 2008 09:43:27 +1100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: re live testing In-Reply-To: <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> Message-ID: <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> On 02/04/2008, at 2:39 AM, Ricardo Martins wrote: > Fortunately, in the last versions, Indesign added some nice > resources to integrate dynamic data through simple databases or XML. > You can populate an TXT file with different data and Indesign loads > it and generate different versions of a document. They can be > printed, exported to PDF or imported by other softwares Thanks for that, Ricardo. I will pass that on to our studio and avoid the workers' compensation cases for work induced insanity. We are using the latest indesign and enjoying many of its features, but I hadn't thought of that. It's obviously there with xml. I just hadn't made the connection. David -- blog: www.communication.org.au/dsblog web: http://www.communication.org.au Professor David Sless BA MSc FRSA CEO ? Communication Research Institute ? ? helping people communicate with people ? Mobile: +61 (0)412 356 795 Phone: +61 (0)3 9489 8640 60 Park Street ? Fitzroy North ? Melbourne ? Australia ? 3068 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080402/f5ce55a0/attachment-0010.htm -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: CRI-lh-logo-col.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 1634 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080402/f5ce55a0/attachment-0010.jpg From ralexm at terra.com.br Wed Apr 2 01:14:17 2008 From: ralexm at terra.com.br (Ricardo Martins) Date: Tue, 01 Apr 2008 20:14:17 -0300 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: re live testing In-Reply-To: <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> Message-ID: <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080401/6c3c7736/attachment-0010.htm -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 1634 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080401/6c3c7736/attachment-0010.jpeg From p.stiff at reading.ac.uk Thu Apr 3 18:33:25 2008 From: p.stiff at reading.ac.uk (Paul Stiff) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 17:33:25 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> Message-ID: <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Today (3 April 2008) on BBC Radio 4?s consumer affairs programme, ?You and yours?, there was an item about ?small print?. This was prompted by Labour MP Nick Palmer?s recent proposal in (the UK) parliament of ?a Bill to make requirements regarding the minimum size of print in certain documents, including those relating to advertising and contracts ... The Bill's objective is ... to ensure that customers are reasonably able to read what [the terms and conditions in advertisements or contracts] say? On radio, the ?You and yours? presenter summarized the Bill?s practical proposal, a legal minimum size for the text of contractual offers, T&Cs, etc: ?at least two millimetres high or twelve point font size?. A speaker representing the Royal National Institute for the Blind then supported the proposal; he could read ?standard size print? only with a magnifying glass. He was followed by MP Nick Palmer, who began with a correction: ?a factual point, it?s two centimetres, rather than two millimetres?. A representative of the Direct Marketing Association was later asked by the Y&Y presenter: ?Would the industry be willing to print larger text, two centimetres high?? DMA person: ?Two centimetres is quite ...? [she was going to say ?large?, but was interrupted by:] Y&Y presenter: ?I?m so sorry, twelve point font size?. And there we leave them, all still a bit confused about how to describe the size of this stuff. [You can hear them via ?listen again? at: ] A point [ho-ho] about describing ?type size? on paper: Attempts to regulate this aspect of the appearance of published text can start with a generalized guideline (e.g., ?You should provide large print/Braille versions of all literature, such as menus, instructions, etc? or ?Large enough to be read by a person wearing spectacles?) but eventually they have to define in numeric terms what they mean by ?large? and ?small?. But most readers of this will know that some ?fonts? at ?twelve point size? look smaller than other ?fonts? at ?ten point size?. That is, bigger is sometimes smaller than smaller. And vice versa. This peculiarity is, of course, not confined to regulation and law. It arises any time anyone needs to make an objective description of this simple typographic dimension. It is possible to be objectively precise about size, but the people who would have to implement typographic-appearance regulations through a specification of some kind are often neither scientists nor even printers or designers. So it would probably be unhelpful to define size in terms such as, for example, degrees of visual angle subtended by the viewed object on the viewer?s retina at a given viewing distance. Anyway, people sometimes want to be able to measure ?type size?, in order to check it themselves and make comparisons. But they usually find it hard to do so. And whatever they measure, they often don?t find it easy to locate an equivalent -- to what they measured -- in the dialog box (formatting palette, whatever) of the software application that they use to produce the required ?large? (or ?small?) print. So, is there a solution to this (old) problem? Paul Stiff From brian at brianparkinson.co.uk Thu Apr 3 19:17:05 2008 From: brian at brianparkinson.co.uk (Brian Parkinson) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 18:17:05 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: <9A8A5853-BBF8-4A78-90EE-667C38F2AE45@brianparkinson.co.uk> Good to hear your voice again Paul. How are you? All well here - lots of work at the moment - some of it interesting. Hope to see you before too long Brian From brian at brianparkinson.co.uk Thu Apr 3 19:17:55 2008 From: brian at brianparkinson.co.uk (Brian Parkinson) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 18:17:55 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: This proposal needs to go further I think - readable type has to go hand in hand with clearly written text. If the content is impenetrable legalese, even 20cm lettering won't help people to understand it. Brian Parkinson On 3 Apr 2008, at April 3 5:33 pm, Paul Stiff wrote: > This was prompted by Labour MP Nick Palmer?s recent proposal in (the > UK) parliament of ?a Bill to make requirements regarding the minimum > size of print in certain documents, including those relating to > advertising and contracts ... The Bill's objective is ... to ensure > that customers are reasonably able to read what [the terms and > conditions in advertisements or contracts] say? From waarde at glo.be Thu Apr 3 20:52:31 2008 From: waarde at glo.be (Karel van der Waarde) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 20:52:31 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: Dear Paul, Brian, It remains a pleasant discussion. It might be worth splitting this issue into two: a. Determining if text can be read. I don't think there is any typesize that would 'enable people to read a text'. The typesize on medical package leaflets is frequently 'too small' for patients, but the same patients can read the back of a lottery ticket without any problems ... b. Developing regulations and laws. Some of the information about medicines must be a specific typesize. The EU-readability guideline states that package leaflets must be in a typsize of "8 point Didot". [I've got no idea why they use a Didot-unit, why they specify non-metric measurements, nor where the '8' came from.] But even with a specified typesize, it is very easy to make a text illegible. Just print 8 point text (or 20 point) in a pale yellow on a slightly off-white background and print every second word upside down and in reverse. Even a 'readability formula' wouldn't notice this ... Unfortunately, specifying a typesize in a regulation also means that it must be measurable. It is no good to state '12 point' if nobody is able to check if a printed text is really 12 points ... The only person who can really tell if a text can be read and understood is a reader. [Well trained and experienced designers can make a good guess, but it remains a guess.] I'm convinced that we have to ask a small number of readers to see if our guesses are correct or need to be modified. Technology has developed a little so we can actually provide most information in most sizes - on request. And that solves the regulatory problem as well. Any law in this area must make it obligatory to involve people (non-designers, readers, potential users) in the design process and ask them to use texts. The laws should simply ask for proof that 'a document enables people to act appropriately'. This proof should indicate which people should be enabled, which actions are relevant, and what appropriate levels of success are. If visually impaired people need to act, than the information must be supplied in a format that 'enables a visually impaired person to act appropriately'. Same for people who have difficulties reading English, or difficulties in reading at all. It's a serious shortcoming of the information design community that we have not been able to convince politicians in the last 30 years or so that graphic design literature is not really suitable as a base for legislation. It's a serious shortcoming of politicians that they still base regulations on the production of large quantities of identically printed paper sheets. Digital technology makes it relatively simple to provide information in several formats (large print, small print, sound), on screen and on paper, and in all required languages. It seems that the UK Parliament is again fighting against the wrong symptoms. They did the same in 1848 when they adopted the 'Nuisances removal and contagious diseases prevention act' that was based on the idea that cholera was caused by bad smells. Unfortunately, removing the bad smell did not protect against cholera. Dumping the waste in the Thames actually caused another 15.000 cholera-casualties in 1848 and 1849. In other words, if you look at 'small print' only, it is unlikely any law can 'ensure that customers are reasonably able to read what they say'. Removing 'small type' from all documents does not ensure that people are able to read what they say'. Involving people in the development process and providing information in all required formats might need to be considered. Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be >Today (3 April 2008) on BBC Radio 4?s consumer affairs programme,? >?You and yours?, there was an item about ?small print?. > >This was prompted by Labour MP Nick Palmer?s recent proposal in (the? >UK) parliament of ?a Bill to make requirements regarding the minimum? >size of print in certain documents, including those relating to? >advertising and contracts ... The Bill's objective is ... to ensure? >that customers are reasonably able to read what [the terms and? >conditions in advertisements or contracts] say? > >debtext/80226-0006.htm#08022642000680> > >On radio, the ?You and yours? presenter summarized the Bill?s? >practical proposal, a legal minimum size for the text of contractual? >offers, T&Cs, etc: ?at least two millimetres high or twelve point? >font size?. > >A speaker representing the Royal National Institute for the Blind? >then supported the proposal; he could read ?standard size print? only? >with a magnifying glass. > >He was followed by MP Nick Palmer, who began with a correction: ?a? >factual point, it?s two centimetres, rather than two millimetres?. > >A representative of the Direct Marketing Association was later asked? >by the Y&Y presenter: ?Would the industry be willing to print larger? >text, two centimetres high?? > >DMA person: ?Two centimetres is quite ...? > >[she was going to say ?large?, but was interrupted by:] > >Y&Y presenter: ?I?m so sorry, twelve point font size?. > >And there we leave them, all still a bit confused about how to? >describe the size of this stuff. [You can hear them via ?listen? >again? at: ] > >A point [ho-ho] about describing ?type size? on paper: > >Attempts to regulate this aspect of the appearance of published text? >can start with a generalized guideline (e.g., ?You should provide? >large print/Braille versions of all literature, such as menus,? >instructions, etc? or ?Large enough to be read by a person wearing? >spectacles?) but eventually they have to define in numeric terms what? >they mean by ?large? and ?small?. > >But most readers of this will know that some ?fonts? at ?twelve point? >size? look smaller than other ?fonts? at ?ten point size?. That is,? >bigger is sometimes smaller than smaller. And vice versa. > >This peculiarity is, of course, not confined to regulation and law.? >It arises any time anyone needs to make an objective description of? >this simple typographic dimension. > >It is possible to be objectively precise about size, but the people? >who would have to implement typographic-appearance regulations? >through a specification of some kind are often neither scientists nor? >even printers or designers. So it would probably be unhelpful to? >define size in terms such as, for example, degrees of visual angle? >subtended by the viewed object on the viewer?s retina at a given? >viewing distance. > >Anyway, people sometimes want to be able to measure ?type size?, in? >order to check it themselves and make comparisons. But they usually? >find it hard to do so. And whatever they measure, they often don?t? >find it easy to locate an equivalent -- to what they measured -- in? >the dialog box (formatting palette, whatever) of the software? >application that they use to produce the required ?large? (or? >?small?) print. > >So, is there a solution to this (old) problem? > >Paul Stiff From katie at raincharm.co.uk Thu Apr 3 21:17:26 2008 From: katie at raincharm.co.uk (Raincharm Communications Limited) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 20:17:26 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters reply Message-ID: <856FAC7F4D054E9BACABFF2503A89687@KatiePC> Hi Just read the post relating to the recent Radio 4 debate on font size and what should be set as a standard. As former publications and editorial manager at the Disability Rights Commission (DRC), I was involved in the writing and implementation of an overall publications strategy which included a style guide on font size, typeface and various other accessibility issues. When the DRC began we decided to set 14 point as a standard font size for all documents, excepting those in Easy Read (aimed at people with learning disabilities) which were set at 16 point. It was always quite a struggle convincing other organisations to do the same mainly due to the cost implications - bigger font size meaning more pages and therefore a higher cost. However, once the budget issues are taken out of the equation one is left with the simple fact that a 14 point font size is much clearer and easier to read. I do remember we struggled with maintaining this approach when buying ad space as the cost is so exorbitant in 14 point. Another bone of contention was font size of footnotes in lengthy research documents but we always stuck to our guns and it seemed to pay off! Now working as a consultant advising businesses and other organisations on how to make their information provision more accessible and inclusive, I do still recommend a 14 point font size. Surely it is more important to improve the quality and accessibility of a document for everyone, not only people with impairments but also those who may have low literacy skills or for whom English is not their first language. This approach only ends up benefiting everyone. Equality of opportunity and inclusivity can only be achieved if people commit to what is an exemplary standard ie what goes above and beyond the 'norm'. It is all about setting a precedent for best practice. Once this has been accepted as the standard then others will follow suit. Best Wishes Katie Grant Director Raincharm Communications Ltd Tel 07971 909007 Registered No. 6267862 VAT No. 913 3364 44 www.raincharm.co.uk -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080403/b76d2e33/attachment-0008.htm From conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk Thu Apr 3 22:57:24 2008 From: conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk (Conrad Taylor) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 21:57:24 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: Paul Stiff wrote, sagely and entertainingly: >Attempts to regulate this aspect of the appearance of published text? >can start with a generalized guideline (e.g., ?You should provide? >large print/Braille versions of all literature, such as menus,? >instructions, etc? or ?Large enough to be read by a person wearing? >spectacles?) but eventually they have to define in numeric terms what? >they mean by ?large? and ?small?. > >But most readers of this will know that some ?fonts? at ?twelve point? >size? look smaller than other ?fonts? at ?ten point size?. That is, >bigger is sometimes smaller than smaller. And vice versa. Since 12pt in one font may be either larger or smaller, more or less legible than 12pt in another font, the obvious answer for the unimaginative and unskilled legislator is to define not only the size, but the font itself. In the British context, I am sure this New Labour government would be very happy to define the specifications as Arial 14pt. They bow to Microsoft in much else, so why not this? This would cap Microsoft's success in getting approval from an exhausted international standards community for their OfficeOpen XML "standard". :-) Conrad -- From d.sless at communication.org.au Fri Apr 4 05:17:44 2008 From: d.sless at communication.org.au (David Sless) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 14:17:44 +1100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: Hi All, To underline and elaborate what Karel has said on this subject. The problem regulators face, put simply, is they don't have the necessary understanding of ID to come up with sensible regulation of information. This is made worse by that the fact (as Donald Rumsfeld might have put it) they don't know they don't know. At CRI we have been working on this problem for some time, with mixed success. You can see some of our efforts on this in our publications, and, as Karel knows because he has done a lot of work on it, we are working on something at the moment that will push the case for better training of regulators a bit further. But it is hard and largely unrewarding work. Most EU regulators with whom I have engaged on this subject regard me as 'unhelpful' and some refuse to attend conferences, if I am a speaker (mind you, I feel like that myself sometimes). The basic shift that needs to occur is from regulating content to regulating performance Put differently it's a matter of looking at ends rather than means. The end is readable text. As we all agree, regulating font size is a poor means of getting to that particular outcome. I could go on but? David -- blog: www.communication.org.au/dsblog web: http://www.communication.org.au -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080404/167a1d69/attachment-0008.htm From r.waller at reading.ac.uk Fri Apr 4 10:07:17 2008 From: r.waller at reading.ac.uk (Rob Waller) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 09:07:17 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: <31A43BA4-AA08-42C4-B663-B9C5CD61C158@reading.ac.uk> Can I add a couple of thoughts to the debate? There is undoubtedly a big problem of naive information design becoming enshrined in the law, and there are plenty of historical and current examples of this. However, as a profession we do need to respond to the kind of concerns the politicians are expressing. As an aside I don't believe the fact that 12pt is a vague definition is a big problem in practice - even 12pt Bembo would be more legible than what we get now. More to the point is that to print most terms of business in 12pt of any typeface would lead to acres of paper, and, as others have suggested, would not ensure they are read. Indeed customer research often shows people are intimidated by long documents, even when clearly written. I'm not convinced testing is a universal solution - fine for medicines information perhaps, where a highly regulated product is marketed over a period of time in a stable format, but many of the kind of documents this MP is talking about, which include newspaper advertisements and direct mail, are produced to fast timescales and may even be in personalised formats. I think it would be useful to explore a risk-based approach. This is effectively what legal departments in large organisations do when they assess documents before they go out. For example, in some cases they approve an abbreviated reference to 'terms and conditions apply' whereas in other cases they insist the full set is supplied. About three years ago we surveyed practice among mobile phone companies and found quite a wide range of strategies. As well as the two I've mentioned, we also found quite a common practice of summarising the most important terms of business in larger or bolder type - but you need some kind of risk assessment to tell you what is important. A risk-based approach means assessing each item and coming to a view about (a) the likelihood of it being misunderstood, (b) the likelihood of the eventuality it caters for actually happening, and (c) the potential damage to the customer (or indeed to the company's relationship with the customer, and its reputation) if it is misunderstood and the eventuality happens. The risk assessment process could be tested with customers, even if every document cannot be. An example of a low risk item might be the part of the contract that states that if the company is sold to another company, the contract will be transferred to the buyer without changes. Not an everyday occurrence, and not one that would bother most people so long as the service continues without material changes. A high risk item might be the penalties for early release from a contract, or how complaints are handled. Most of us would not mind, and would not be penalised for our laziness, if the very low risk items were in 5pt, or for that matter printed on a banana and fired into space. So long as the high risk items were prominent, legible and designed to be taken seriously. An anecdotal example of this is my own claim under insurance that I was sold by my water supplier to cover problems with drains. It turned out (deep in the small print) that if my drain went under someone else's land to reach the main sewer I was not covered. Yet this is the most common arrangement in the newly built town where I live. So almost no one here can actually claim under this policy. A risk assessment of this clause would have told them there is a very high risk of this eventuality, that it threatens the whole point of the policy, and therefore there is highly likely to be damage to the customer relationship. And to make sure it does damage their reputation in some small way, I will mention that the company is Anglian Water and the 'cover' is provided for them by Homeserve. Rob Waller -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080404/5337615e/attachment-0007.htm From teather at compuserve.com Fri Apr 4 10:18:42 2008 From: teather at compuserve.com (Jane Teather) Date: Fri, 04 Apr 2008 09:18:42 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters reply In-Reply-To: <856FAC7F4D054E9BACABFF2503A89687@KatiePC> References: <856FAC7F4D054E9BACABFF2503A89687@KatiePC> Message-ID: <47F5E462.4050503@compuserve.com> Just adding my voice to those of Karel and David ? this is immensely frustrating for those of us who work on information about medicines and healthcare. As we know, size in points is a very inexact predictor of actual type size, and there?s a huge amount more to legibility than just size. But regulators are ever keen to impose over-simplistic rules, even when these are based on ignorance. We get ridiculous situations where a leaflet has done very well in testing ? to the extent that respondents have spontaneously commented on the ?nice big type? ? but it is deemed unacceptable because, by regulatory standards, the type is too small. If we then reset the same text in a light, condensed font, tightening up the letterspacing, but making it 2 points ?larger?, then it will be fine! This is treating the whole process of diagnostic testing, and the people who need crucial information about their medicines, with contempt. Rather than just grumbling (though we certainly grumble a lot), we have sought to explain: for example, I took some time to respond in detail, complete with diagrams and examples, to one of their proposals, and David has mentioned his efforts. But regulators apparently don?t want to learn and understand; they simply want to make meaningless rules. They have, ominously, just discovered the term ?leading? ? goodness knows what senseless interpretation they will manage to put on it. The Radio 4 piece which Paul originally mentioned would have been hilarious were it not so scary in its implications. If we?re not careful, we really could find ourselves setting text 2 cm high (is that baseline-to-baseline, or x-height? I think we should be told). Regards Jane _______________________________ Jane Teather JET Documentation Services 54A Ferme Park Road London N4 4ED tel: +44 (0) 20 8348 9213 fax: +44 (0) 20 8374 0342 mobile: +44 (0) 7967 366 252 teather at compuserve.com Fellow of the Communication Research Institute http://www.communication.org.au > _________________ > From waarde at glo.be Fri Apr 4 11:42:01 2008 From: waarde at glo.be (Karel van der Waarde) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 11:42:01 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters reply In-Reply-To: <47F5E462.4050503@compuserve.com> References: <856FAC7F4D054E9BACABFF2503A89687@KatiePC> <47F5E462.4050503@compuserve.com> Message-ID: Dear all, Thanks for the reactions. How can we convince regulators and guideline writers that point sizes are not the most important factor when it comes to understanding texts? Two arguments: - 1 - If all documents would follow the 12 point or 14 point standard, would all these documents really be easier to understand? - 2 - Are all documents that use a smaller typesize more difficult to understand? [Most newspapers, novels, study books, webpages, magazines use a smaller typesize. Should all these be discarded as incomprehensible?] I think that it is necessary to focus on the 'understanding' and 'easy to read' criteria, and not on the pointsizes. The relation between the two is certainly not direct. Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be [One anecdote: The new 'Draft Readability guideline' for medicine leaflets in Europe states that the typesize must be at least 12 points. The text of these leaflets is determined by another law and cannot be made shorter. Following the guideline would therefore mean that the dimensions of these leaflets must increase. This would require larger medicine boxes. Even a small size increase - say 10% - of all boxes would mean that most pharmacies in Europe need to rebuild their shelves, and probably their premises, to store the same number of medicines. Unfortunately, the extra costs for larger paper leaflets and cardboard boxes, new folding machines, new stuffing machines, increased transport costs, and rebuilding storage facilities will be paid by all of us. The price of medicines and health-insurance simply goes up. It is even more unfortunate that the increase in typesize does not help to make medicine leaflets easier to read.] From jk at nqpaofu.com Fri Apr 4 12:24:11 2008 From: jk at nqpaofu.com (Jouke Kleerebezem) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 12:24:11 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: Paul's amusing reference and valid questions about readability regulation [should other factors such as kerning, paper quality, ink (color), font type be included?] of the _material_ text bring me to my question to this list's expert readership, for a current project in which the limit of readability is sought for artistic purpose: a hybrid book/pdf/online publication which aims to benefit of specific media qualities, in the mix. A pdf is zoom-able, a 2pt size text at 400+% reads from a screen and prints well. Web browsers scale text but not images. The book, well, is a book -- no need to again praise its superior intimacy and usability. But it needs a seperate reading device to zoom in it. My question is simple: in your experience, which combination of font, type size, ink color, paper quality gives the most extreme detail in the hands of a skilled off-set printer? Or in another printing technique, provided the result would be 'ink on paper'. Which material qualities would enlarge best under the magnifying glass? Artist James Lee Byars once showed me a 10x10mm piece of paper which had been printed on some Swiss mountain in a dust free room and under other 'perfect' conditions. I forgot how much words it contained but its type size was under 2pt for sure. Then we know about small type engraved rice grains, pin heads etc. I'd be interested in any reference to miniature (text) print and other fabrication/reproduction 'out there'. Like the miniature books exhibition at http://www.indiana.edu/~liblilly/miniatures/index.shtml Today we have the nano bible: http://popsci.typepad.com/popsci/2007/12/nanotech-squeez.html . With reading devices developing parallel to writing technologies, where will practical applications go? Jouke Kleerebezem nomanisanisland at wanadoo.fr -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080404/22b8ee3b/attachment-0007.htm From r.waller at reading.ac.uk Fri Apr 4 12:58:25 2008 From: r.waller at reading.ac.uk (Rob Waller) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 11:58:25 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: <68EA3006-3760-46F7-B1C5-F63C9AA7BFDD@reading.ac.uk> Jouke's post reminds me that what we call 'small print' in the UK, is known as 'fine print' in the USA. There the custom is apparently to print business contracts on Columbia iron presses, using hand-made rag paper, bound in the finest calfskin. Rob Waller -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080404/e69ae505/attachment-0007.htm From carina.andersson at mdh.se Fri Apr 4 13:03:54 2008 From: carina.andersson at mdh.se (Carina Andersson) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 13:03:54 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters reply In-Reply-To: References: <856FAC7F4D054E9BACABFF2503A89687@KatiePC> <47F5E462.4050503@compuserve.com> Message-ID: <80DAB1E7B9936448A084E71CC703AFF226EA81A200@MBXCLUSTER.mdh.local> Dear alla and Karel This discussion seems to be about legibility, readability and "reading value". Does an individual perceive a text, picture or form? Does an individual understand a specific text, picture or form? Does an individual have an interest in the text, picture or form? I see these three concepts as three communicative levels. They are different, but still dependent on each other. You need the first level, legibility, to reach a second level, readability and so on. All the best Carina Andersson PhD-Candidate in Information design School of Innovation, Design and Engineering M?lardalen University Box 325 SE-631 05 Eskilstuna Sweden Phone: +46 (0)16-15 36 89 Cellphone: +46 (0)73- 182 23 19 Fax: +46 (0)16-15 36 50 -----Ursprungligt meddelande----- Fr?n: infodesign-cafe-bounces at list.informationdesign.org [mailto:infodesign-cafe-bounces at list.informationdesign.org] F?r Karel van der Waarde Skickat: den 4 april 2008 11:42 Till: Discussions about information design ?mne: Re: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters reply Dear all, Thanks for the reactions. How can we convince regulators and guideline writers that point sizes are not the most important factor when it comes to understanding texts? Two arguments: - 1 - If all documents would follow the 12 point or 14 point standard, would all these documents really be easier to understand? - 2 - Are all documents that use a smaller typesize more difficult to understand? [Most newspapers, novels, study books, webpages, magazines use a smaller typesize. Should all these be discarded as incomprehensible?] I think that it is necessary to focus on the 'understanding' and 'easy to read' criteria, and not on the pointsizes. The relation between the two is certainly not direct. Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be [One anecdote: The new 'Draft Readability guideline' for medicine leaflets in Europe states that the typesize must be at least 12 points. The text of these leaflets is determined by another law and cannot be made shorter. Following the guideline would therefore mean that the dimensions of these leaflets must increase. This would require larger medicine boxes. Even a small size increase - say 10% - of all boxes would mean that most pharmacies in Europe need to rebuild their shelves, and probably their premises, to store the same number of medicines. Unfortunately, the extra costs for larger paper leaflets and cardboard boxes, new folding machines, new stuffing machines, increased transport costs, and rebuilding storage facilities will be paid by all of us. The price of medicines and health-insurance simply goes up. It is even more unfortunate that the increase in typesize does not help to make medicine leaflets easier to read.] ___________________________________________________________________ Use the following address to post a message to all subscribers: infodesign-cafe at list.informationdesign.org To subscribe, unsubscribe or change your options, visit: http://list.InformationDesign.org/mailman/listinfo/infodesign-cafe For all Information Design matters: http://InformationDesign.org Problems? Write to: InfoDesign-Cafe-Admin at list.InformationDesign.org ___________________________________________________________________ From SWANSONG at ecu.edu Fri Apr 4 14:31:56 2008 From: SWANSONG at ecu.edu (Swanson, Gunnar) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 08:31:56 -0400 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters reply References: <856FAC7F4D054E9BACABFF2503A89687@KatiePC> Message-ID: <556BA53FA6DBA14CBD1605F1735C0FEC76F460@ecufs9.intra.ecu.edu> I've been assuming that this was a discussion of some specific British or European regulatory action regarding some specific variety of text and I don't understand the context so I've stayed out of it. Sweeping statements about the benefits of type size for readability tend to lead to clumsy typesetting that is often more difficult to read than the smaller type it is meant to prevent. ICOGRADA does a monthly poll on its newsletter/website that makes me embarrassed to be a graphic designer. It is consistently inane, misleading, or just plain stupid. It's at http://www.icograda.org/feature/opinion_poll.htm This month's is perhaps the worst.: IS 12 POINT FONT LARGE ENOUGH? This weeks opinion poll comes from Samantha S. Sannella, the President of Design Exchange. Pet Peve: Small Font. I am guilty of it. We are guilty of it. It's in our newsletters, on our business cards and on many of our publications. Is 12 point font large enough? Personally, I type in 18 point font nowadays and change the font size before sending. When did 9, 10 or 11 point font become acceptable? Am I getting old? Actually, I tested my eyes recently and they were perfect, however, the doctor did not test my eye fatigue - which I believe contributes to my recent dislike of miniscule letters. Of course, I have a theory - Go Big or Go Home. Calling all graphic designers: let's go big. What is your take? Is 12 point font large enough? [radio button] I agree with Samantha, 12 point font is just too small! [radio button] I think that font size should be relative to the medium one is working with. [radio button] I think that 12 point font is completely adequate. ---------- I suggest 72 pt Franklin Gothic Demi in black ink on smooth 87% reflectance warm white paper for the following: WTF? It seems, however, that 18 point may be adequate for the following: No, Samantha. I am old. You are stupid. They are not the same. Gunnar ---------- Gunnar Swanson Design Office 1901 East 6th Street Greenville, North Carolina 27858 USA gunnar at gunnarswanson.com +1 252 258 7006 http://www.gunnarswanson.com at East Carolina University: swansong at ecu.edu +1 252 328 2839 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080404/ebb90bef/attachment-0007.htm From katie at raincharm.co.uk Fri Apr 4 15:21:11 2008 From: katie at raincharm.co.uk (Raincharm Communications Limited) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 14:21:11 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: reply to karel and others - size matters Message-ID: <294CEEAA08F045A2971A7B64E7321136@KatiePC> Hi I totally agree with Karel's comment on how it is the readability of the actual content which is the crucial element. It makes no difference how large a font is if the text is complex and poorly written. I also take the point on the ease of making text larger in electronic and digital formats. Despite all the developments in technology and providing information online in a variety of downloadable formats, people still demand print based materials for a lot of documents, particularly government departments launching research findings or new initiatives. I worked on several lengthy documents at the DRC which were supposed to be online only but ended up as expensive print versions. This is without mentioning some of the bilingual print documents which are printed in Welsh and English often running to over 200 pages in some cases. I'd be interested to hear from anyone who is working on easier to read documents. I have several years experience writing and designing Easy Read documents for people with learning disabilities a format which, to my knowledge, has never been applied to the production of patient information leaflets. There is a very real need to design information for the elderly/older people in an easier to read format and patient information leaflets would seem to require this approach. Other audiences who need to be considered are those for whom English is not their first language - migrant workers and asylum seekers/refugees. What information is available in an easier to read format for these people? Happy to share ideas with interested parties. Katie Raincharm Communications Ltd Tel 07971 909007 Registered No. 6267862 VAT No. 913 3364 44 www.raincharm.co.uk -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080404/695f867e/attachment-0007.htm From waarde at glo.be Fri Apr 4 19:29:13 2008 From: waarde at glo.be (Karel van der Waarde) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 19:29:13 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: <31A43BA4-AA08-42C4-B663-B9C5CD61C158@reading.ac.uk> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> <31A43BA4-AA08-42C4-B663-B9C5CD61C158@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: Rob, Thanks for your reply. >I'm not convinced testing is a universal solution - fine for >medicines information perhaps, where a highly regulated product is >marketed over a period of time in a stable format, but many of the >kind of documents this MP is talking about, which include newspaper >advertisements and direct mail, are produced to fast timescales and >may even be in personalised formats. The way the tests are applied to medicines at the moment is far from optimal and probably even detrimental. As Jane Teather mentioned: the results are often ignored or overruled by even more obscure guidelines. >I think it would be useful to explore a risk-based approach. This is >effectively what legal departments in large organisations do when >they assess documents before they go out. For example, in some cases >they approve an abbreviated reference to 'terms and conditions >apply' whereas in other cases they insist the full set is supplied. >About three years ago we surveyed practice among mobile phone >companies and found quite a wide range of strategies. As well as the >two I've mentioned, we also found quite a common practice of >summarising the most important terms of business in larger or bolder >type - but you need some kind of risk assessment to tell you what is >important. This is exactly what patients expect when I discuss alternatives to the current package leaflets, or when test-participants suggest improvements. It would be useful to have a 'creditcard size' card in each medicine box. On the front, it mentions the five or six most important things about a medicine. On the back, it mentions relevant websites, e-mail addresses, phone numbers, patient organizations and government websites. [This is not suitable for all medicines, but would cover approx 80%.] Unfortunately, this is illegal in Europe. The highest risk of poor documents seem to me: - financial costs - wasting energy and materials - wasting time (multiplied by the number of people who read texts) - increasing frustration (= negative fun) I guess that the first two would be of interest to politicians, the first three to companies, and all four to all of us. Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be From conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk Sun Apr 6 08:08:39 2008 From: conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk (Conrad Taylor) Date: Sun, 6 Apr 2008 07:08:39 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: "Bank upgrade excluding blind" Message-ID: May interest Cafe readers who work on the design of financial statements: > "Visually impaired customers of American Express say > they can no longer read their credit card statements > online. > > "In December Amex changed its format for UK statements > from HTML to Portable Document Format or PDF. > > "However, it failed to encode the new PDF documents so > they could be read by "screen readers," special > software used by blind or partially sighted people. Story in full at the BBC News website: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/moneybox/7332216.stm Conrad -- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080406/25974167/attachment-0005.htm From marconi2006 at googlemail.com Mon Apr 7 08:47:05 2008 From: marconi2006 at googlemail.com (Jose de Souza) Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2008 07:47:05 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Animated balloon captions Message-ID: Colleagues, I imagine that you have heard about a company called "Bubbleply.com", this web video-sharing service allows anyone to add various types of captions (i.e., comics balloon like frames embedded with text, pictures or films) to video. A video tutorial is available at http://www.bubbleply.com I am researching on the effectiveness of such "animated balloon captions", which in my case are used in purely visual instructional animations (i.e., no sound or voice narration). I have compared captions versions with words-only, pictures plus words and motion pictures-only. The results suggests that motion pictures-only captions are far better (i.e., mistakes, completion time and transfer of learning) than words-only versions. As we might expect picture plus words is also better than words-only caption, but not as dramatic as motion pictures-only version. I have already collected some literature about it, but I was wondering if you would know any research or recent trends on the design of animated captions. Any suggestion or insights will be appreciated. Thanks. -- Jos? de Souza PhD Student Department of Typography & Graphic Communication The University of Reading From d.sless at communication.org.au Tue Apr 1 11:22:43 2008 From: d.sless at communication.org.au (David Sless) Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2008 20:22:43 +1100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: re live testing In-Reply-To: <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> On 27/03/2008, at 9:10 PM, Rob Waller wrote: > It's also worth saying that as time progresses, the need to test > probably gets greater - a few years ago we were mostly designing > bills that had been rather primitive printouts, and the new designs > were always better than the old. Now, the redesign is quite likely > to be of a bill that has already been through the process, but now > needs updating because products or brands have changed. I think this is true. But with a caveat. Our long range monitoring of such documents shows that they deteriorate quite quickly in use, more so these days with the rapid product and branding changes that Rob mentions. In one of our recent published case histories, we found that a document we originally designed in 1988 had a fairly long life, but by 2003 it had deteriorated from its original excellent performance level to a level where only 42% of customers could use it at an acceptable level. The redesign brought the document up to an acceptable level, but within months of implementation we began to see some deterioration of performance. Mocking up alternative designs for testing, though, can be a real chore. Rob described part of the horror in this type of work > we had to format pages of itemised calls, and it was no one's > favourite task. Add to Rob's un-favourite tasks, the task we sometimes get: hand crafting multiple versions of the same document 'just to illustrate' what each variant will look like. Using software like Quark or InDesign to do this type of repetitive task can drive one to madness. Thankfully, some of the newer software used for driving these dynamic document systems allow for rapid modification and prototyping, saving us all from these horrible tasks. David -- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080401/73f9b0e5/attachment-0011.htm From ralexm at terra.com.br Tue Apr 1 17:39:58 2008 From: ralexm at terra.com.br (Ricardo Martins) Date: Tue, 01 Apr 2008 12:39:58 -0300 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: re live testing In-Reply-To: <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> Message-ID: <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080401/d4a1cc4f/attachment-0011.htm From d.sless at communication.org.au Wed Apr 2 00:43:27 2008 From: d.sless at communication.org.au (David Sless) Date: Wed, 2 Apr 2008 09:43:27 +1100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: re live testing In-Reply-To: <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> Message-ID: <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> On 02/04/2008, at 2:39 AM, Ricardo Martins wrote: > Fortunately, in the last versions, Indesign added some nice > resources to integrate dynamic data through simple databases or XML. > You can populate an TXT file with different data and Indesign loads > it and generate different versions of a document. They can be > printed, exported to PDF or imported by other softwares Thanks for that, Ricardo. I will pass that on to our studio and avoid the workers' compensation cases for work induced insanity. We are using the latest indesign and enjoying many of its features, but I hadn't thought of that. It's obviously there with xml. I just hadn't made the connection. David -- blog: www.communication.org.au/dsblog web: http://www.communication.org.au Professor David Sless BA MSc FRSA CEO ? Communication Research Institute ? ? helping people communicate with people ? Mobile: +61 (0)412 356 795 Phone: +61 (0)3 9489 8640 60 Park Street ? Fitzroy North ? Melbourne ? Australia ? 3068 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080402/f5ce55a0/attachment-0011.htm -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: CRI-lh-logo-col.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 1634 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080402/f5ce55a0/attachment-0011.jpg From ralexm at terra.com.br Wed Apr 2 01:14:17 2008 From: ralexm at terra.com.br (Ricardo Martins) Date: Tue, 01 Apr 2008 20:14:17 -0300 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: re live testing In-Reply-To: <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> Message-ID: <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080401/6c3c7736/attachment-0011.htm -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 1634 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080401/6c3c7736/attachment-0011.jpeg From p.stiff at reading.ac.uk Thu Apr 3 18:33:25 2008 From: p.stiff at reading.ac.uk (Paul Stiff) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 17:33:25 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> Message-ID: <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Today (3 April 2008) on BBC Radio 4?s consumer affairs programme, ?You and yours?, there was an item about ?small print?. This was prompted by Labour MP Nick Palmer?s recent proposal in (the UK) parliament of ?a Bill to make requirements regarding the minimum size of print in certain documents, including those relating to advertising and contracts ... The Bill's objective is ... to ensure that customers are reasonably able to read what [the terms and conditions in advertisements or contracts] say? On radio, the ?You and yours? presenter summarized the Bill?s practical proposal, a legal minimum size for the text of contractual offers, T&Cs, etc: ?at least two millimetres high or twelve point font size?. A speaker representing the Royal National Institute for the Blind then supported the proposal; he could read ?standard size print? only with a magnifying glass. He was followed by MP Nick Palmer, who began with a correction: ?a factual point, it?s two centimetres, rather than two millimetres?. A representative of the Direct Marketing Association was later asked by the Y&Y presenter: ?Would the industry be willing to print larger text, two centimetres high?? DMA person: ?Two centimetres is quite ...? [she was going to say ?large?, but was interrupted by:] Y&Y presenter: ?I?m so sorry, twelve point font size?. And there we leave them, all still a bit confused about how to describe the size of this stuff. [You can hear them via ?listen again? at: ] A point [ho-ho] about describing ?type size? on paper: Attempts to regulate this aspect of the appearance of published text can start with a generalized guideline (e.g., ?You should provide large print/Braille versions of all literature, such as menus, instructions, etc? or ?Large enough to be read by a person wearing spectacles?) but eventually they have to define in numeric terms what they mean by ?large? and ?small?. But most readers of this will know that some ?fonts? at ?twelve point size? look smaller than other ?fonts? at ?ten point size?. That is, bigger is sometimes smaller than smaller. And vice versa. This peculiarity is, of course, not confined to regulation and law. It arises any time anyone needs to make an objective description of this simple typographic dimension. It is possible to be objectively precise about size, but the people who would have to implement typographic-appearance regulations through a specification of some kind are often neither scientists nor even printers or designers. So it would probably be unhelpful to define size in terms such as, for example, degrees of visual angle subtended by the viewed object on the viewer?s retina at a given viewing distance. Anyway, people sometimes want to be able to measure ?type size?, in order to check it themselves and make comparisons. But they usually find it hard to do so. And whatever they measure, they often don?t find it easy to locate an equivalent -- to what they measured -- in the dialog box (formatting palette, whatever) of the software application that they use to produce the required ?large? (or ?small?) print. So, is there a solution to this (old) problem? Paul Stiff From brian at brianparkinson.co.uk Thu Apr 3 19:17:05 2008 From: brian at brianparkinson.co.uk (Brian Parkinson) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 18:17:05 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: <9A8A5853-BBF8-4A78-90EE-667C38F2AE45@brianparkinson.co.uk> Good to hear your voice again Paul. How are you? All well here - lots of work at the moment - some of it interesting. Hope to see you before too long Brian From brian at brianparkinson.co.uk Thu Apr 3 19:17:55 2008 From: brian at brianparkinson.co.uk (Brian Parkinson) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 18:17:55 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: This proposal needs to go further I think - readable type has to go hand in hand with clearly written text. If the content is impenetrable legalese, even 20cm lettering won't help people to understand it. Brian Parkinson On 3 Apr 2008, at April 3 5:33 pm, Paul Stiff wrote: > This was prompted by Labour MP Nick Palmer?s recent proposal in (the > UK) parliament of ?a Bill to make requirements regarding the minimum > size of print in certain documents, including those relating to > advertising and contracts ... The Bill's objective is ... to ensure > that customers are reasonably able to read what [the terms and > conditions in advertisements or contracts] say? From waarde at glo.be Thu Apr 3 20:52:31 2008 From: waarde at glo.be (Karel van der Waarde) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 20:52:31 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: Dear Paul, Brian, It remains a pleasant discussion. It might be worth splitting this issue into two: a. Determining if text can be read. I don't think there is any typesize that would 'enable people to read a text'. The typesize on medical package leaflets is frequently 'too small' for patients, but the same patients can read the back of a lottery ticket without any problems ... b. Developing regulations and laws. Some of the information about medicines must be a specific typesize. The EU-readability guideline states that package leaflets must be in a typsize of "8 point Didot". [I've got no idea why they use a Didot-unit, why they specify non-metric measurements, nor where the '8' came from.] But even with a specified typesize, it is very easy to make a text illegible. Just print 8 point text (or 20 point) in a pale yellow on a slightly off-white background and print every second word upside down and in reverse. Even a 'readability formula' wouldn't notice this ... Unfortunately, specifying a typesize in a regulation also means that it must be measurable. It is no good to state '12 point' if nobody is able to check if a printed text is really 12 points ... The only person who can really tell if a text can be read and understood is a reader. [Well trained and experienced designers can make a good guess, but it remains a guess.] I'm convinced that we have to ask a small number of readers to see if our guesses are correct or need to be modified. Technology has developed a little so we can actually provide most information in most sizes - on request. And that solves the regulatory problem as well. Any law in this area must make it obligatory to involve people (non-designers, readers, potential users) in the design process and ask them to use texts. The laws should simply ask for proof that 'a document enables people to act appropriately'. This proof should indicate which people should be enabled, which actions are relevant, and what appropriate levels of success are. If visually impaired people need to act, than the information must be supplied in a format that 'enables a visually impaired person to act appropriately'. Same for people who have difficulties reading English, or difficulties in reading at all. It's a serious shortcoming of the information design community that we have not been able to convince politicians in the last 30 years or so that graphic design literature is not really suitable as a base for legislation. It's a serious shortcoming of politicians that they still base regulations on the production of large quantities of identically printed paper sheets. Digital technology makes it relatively simple to provide information in several formats (large print, small print, sound), on screen and on paper, and in all required languages. It seems that the UK Parliament is again fighting against the wrong symptoms. They did the same in 1848 when they adopted the 'Nuisances removal and contagious diseases prevention act' that was based on the idea that cholera was caused by bad smells. Unfortunately, removing the bad smell did not protect against cholera. Dumping the waste in the Thames actually caused another 15.000 cholera-casualties in 1848 and 1849. In other words, if you look at 'small print' only, it is unlikely any law can 'ensure that customers are reasonably able to read what they say'. Removing 'small type' from all documents does not ensure that people are able to read what they say'. Involving people in the development process and providing information in all required formats might need to be considered. Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be >Today (3 April 2008) on BBC Radio 4?s consumer affairs programme,? >?You and yours?, there was an item about ?small print?. > >This was prompted by Labour MP Nick Palmer?s recent proposal in (the? >UK) parliament of ?a Bill to make requirements regarding the minimum? >size of print in certain documents, including those relating to? >advertising and contracts ... The Bill's objective is ... to ensure? >that customers are reasonably able to read what [the terms and? >conditions in advertisements or contracts] say? > >debtext/80226-0006.htm#08022642000680> > >On radio, the ?You and yours? presenter summarized the Bill?s? >practical proposal, a legal minimum size for the text of contractual? >offers, T&Cs, etc: ?at least two millimetres high or twelve point? >font size?. > >A speaker representing the Royal National Institute for the Blind? >then supported the proposal; he could read ?standard size print? only? >with a magnifying glass. > >He was followed by MP Nick Palmer, who began with a correction: ?a? >factual point, it?s two centimetres, rather than two millimetres?. > >A representative of the Direct Marketing Association was later asked? >by the Y&Y presenter: ?Would the industry be willing to print larger? >text, two centimetres high?? > >DMA person: ?Two centimetres is quite ...? > >[she was going to say ?large?, but was interrupted by:] > >Y&Y presenter: ?I?m so sorry, twelve point font size?. > >And there we leave them, all still a bit confused about how to? >describe the size of this stuff. [You can hear them via ?listen? >again? at: ] > >A point [ho-ho] about describing ?type size? on paper: > >Attempts to regulate this aspect of the appearance of published text? >can start with a generalized guideline (e.g., ?You should provide? >large print/Braille versions of all literature, such as menus,? >instructions, etc? or ?Large enough to be read by a person wearing? >spectacles?) but eventually they have to define in numeric terms what? >they mean by ?large? and ?small?. > >But most readers of this will know that some ?fonts? at ?twelve point? >size? look smaller than other ?fonts? at ?ten point size?. That is,? >bigger is sometimes smaller than smaller. And vice versa. > >This peculiarity is, of course, not confined to regulation and law.? >It arises any time anyone needs to make an objective description of? >this simple typographic dimension. > >It is possible to be objectively precise about size, but the people? >who would have to implement typographic-appearance regulations? >through a specification of some kind are often neither scientists nor? >even printers or designers. So it would probably be unhelpful to? >define size in terms such as, for example, degrees of visual angle? >subtended by the viewed object on the viewer?s retina at a given? >viewing distance. > >Anyway, people sometimes want to be able to measure ?type size?, in? >order to check it themselves and make comparisons. But they usually? >find it hard to do so. And whatever they measure, they often don?t? >find it easy to locate an equivalent -- to what they measured -- in? >the dialog box (formatting palette, whatever) of the software? >application that they use to produce the required ?large? (or? >?small?) print. > >So, is there a solution to this (old) problem? > >Paul Stiff From katie at raincharm.co.uk Thu Apr 3 21:17:26 2008 From: katie at raincharm.co.uk (Raincharm Communications Limited) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 20:17:26 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters reply Message-ID: <856FAC7F4D054E9BACABFF2503A89687@KatiePC> Hi Just read the post relating to the recent Radio 4 debate on font size and what should be set as a standard. As former publications and editorial manager at the Disability Rights Commission (DRC), I was involved in the writing and implementation of an overall publications strategy which included a style guide on font size, typeface and various other accessibility issues. When the DRC began we decided to set 14 point as a standard font size for all documents, excepting those in Easy Read (aimed at people with learning disabilities) which were set at 16 point. It was always quite a struggle convincing other organisations to do the same mainly due to the cost implications - bigger font size meaning more pages and therefore a higher cost. However, once the budget issues are taken out of the equation one is left with the simple fact that a 14 point font size is much clearer and easier to read. I do remember we struggled with maintaining this approach when buying ad space as the cost is so exorbitant in 14 point. Another bone of contention was font size of footnotes in lengthy research documents but we always stuck to our guns and it seemed to pay off! Now working as a consultant advising businesses and other organisations on how to make their information provision more accessible and inclusive, I do still recommend a 14 point font size. Surely it is more important to improve the quality and accessibility of a document for everyone, not only people with impairments but also those who may have low literacy skills or for whom English is not their first language. This approach only ends up benefiting everyone. Equality of opportunity and inclusivity can only be achieved if people commit to what is an exemplary standard ie what goes above and beyond the 'norm'. It is all about setting a precedent for best practice. Once this has been accepted as the standard then others will follow suit. Best Wishes Katie Grant Director Raincharm Communications Ltd Tel 07971 909007 Registered No. 6267862 VAT No. 913 3364 44 www.raincharm.co.uk -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080403/b76d2e33/attachment-0009.htm From conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk Thu Apr 3 22:57:24 2008 From: conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk (Conrad Taylor) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 21:57:24 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: Paul Stiff wrote, sagely and entertainingly: >Attempts to regulate this aspect of the appearance of published text? >can start with a generalized guideline (e.g., ?You should provide? >large print/Braille versions of all literature, such as menus,? >instructions, etc? or ?Large enough to be read by a person wearing? >spectacles?) but eventually they have to define in numeric terms what? >they mean by ?large? and ?small?. > >But most readers of this will know that some ?fonts? at ?twelve point? >size? look smaller than other ?fonts? at ?ten point size?. That is, >bigger is sometimes smaller than smaller. And vice versa. Since 12pt in one font may be either larger or smaller, more or less legible than 12pt in another font, the obvious answer for the unimaginative and unskilled legislator is to define not only the size, but the font itself. In the British context, I am sure this New Labour government would be very happy to define the specifications as Arial 14pt. They bow to Microsoft in much else, so why not this? This would cap Microsoft's success in getting approval from an exhausted international standards community for their OfficeOpen XML "standard". :-) Conrad -- From d.sless at communication.org.au Fri Apr 4 05:17:44 2008 From: d.sless at communication.org.au (David Sless) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 14:17:44 +1100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: Hi All, To underline and elaborate what Karel has said on this subject. The problem regulators face, put simply, is they don't have the necessary understanding of ID to come up with sensible regulation of information. This is made worse by that the fact (as Donald Rumsfeld might have put it) they don't know they don't know. At CRI we have been working on this problem for some time, with mixed success. You can see some of our efforts on this in our publications, and, as Karel knows because he has done a lot of work on it, we are working on something at the moment that will push the case for better training of regulators a bit further. But it is hard and largely unrewarding work. Most EU regulators with whom I have engaged on this subject regard me as 'unhelpful' and some refuse to attend conferences, if I am a speaker (mind you, I feel like that myself sometimes). The basic shift that needs to occur is from regulating content to regulating performance Put differently it's a matter of looking at ends rather than means. The end is readable text. As we all agree, regulating font size is a poor means of getting to that particular outcome. I could go on but? David -- blog: www.communication.org.au/dsblog web: http://www.communication.org.au -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080404/167a1d69/attachment-0009.htm From r.waller at reading.ac.uk Fri Apr 4 10:07:17 2008 From: r.waller at reading.ac.uk (Rob Waller) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 09:07:17 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: <31A43BA4-AA08-42C4-B663-B9C5CD61C158@reading.ac.uk> Can I add a couple of thoughts to the debate? There is undoubtedly a big problem of naive information design becoming enshrined in the law, and there are plenty of historical and current examples of this. However, as a profession we do need to respond to the kind of concerns the politicians are expressing. As an aside I don't believe the fact that 12pt is a vague definition is a big problem in practice - even 12pt Bembo would be more legible than what we get now. More to the point is that to print most terms of business in 12pt of any typeface would lead to acres of paper, and, as others have suggested, would not ensure they are read. Indeed customer research often shows people are intimidated by long documents, even when clearly written. I'm not convinced testing is a universal solution - fine for medicines information perhaps, where a highly regulated product is marketed over a period of time in a stable format, but many of the kind of documents this MP is talking about, which include newspaper advertisements and direct mail, are produced to fast timescales and may even be in personalised formats. I think it would be useful to explore a risk-based approach. This is effectively what legal departments in large organisations do when they assess documents before they go out. For example, in some cases they approve an abbreviated reference to 'terms and conditions apply' whereas in other cases they insist the full set is supplied. About three years ago we surveyed practice among mobile phone companies and found quite a wide range of strategies. As well as the two I've mentioned, we also found quite a common practice of summarising the most important terms of business in larger or bolder type - but you need some kind of risk assessment to tell you what is important. A risk-based approach means assessing each item and coming to a view about (a) the likelihood of it being misunderstood, (b) the likelihood of the eventuality it caters for actually happening, and (c) the potential damage to the customer (or indeed to the company's relationship with the customer, and its reputation) if it is misunderstood and the eventuality happens. The risk assessment process could be tested with customers, even if every document cannot be. An example of a low risk item might be the part of the contract that states that if the company is sold to another company, the contract will be transferred to the buyer without changes. Not an everyday occurrence, and not one that would bother most people so long as the service continues without material changes. A high risk item might be the penalties for early release from a contract, or how complaints are handled. Most of us would not mind, and would not be penalised for our laziness, if the very low risk items were in 5pt, or for that matter printed on a banana and fired into space. So long as the high risk items were prominent, legible and designed to be taken seriously. An anecdotal example of this is my own claim under insurance that I was sold by my water supplier to cover problems with drains. It turned out (deep in the small print) that if my drain went under someone else's land to reach the main sewer I was not covered. Yet this is the most common arrangement in the newly built town where I live. So almost no one here can actually claim under this policy. A risk assessment of this clause would have told them there is a very high risk of this eventuality, that it threatens the whole point of the policy, and therefore there is highly likely to be damage to the customer relationship. And to make sure it does damage their reputation in some small way, I will mention that the company is Anglian Water and the 'cover' is provided for them by Homeserve. Rob Waller -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080404/5337615e/attachment-0008.htm From teather at compuserve.com Fri Apr 4 10:18:42 2008 From: teather at compuserve.com (Jane Teather) Date: Fri, 04 Apr 2008 09:18:42 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters reply In-Reply-To: <856FAC7F4D054E9BACABFF2503A89687@KatiePC> References: <856FAC7F4D054E9BACABFF2503A89687@KatiePC> Message-ID: <47F5E462.4050503@compuserve.com> Just adding my voice to those of Karel and David ? this is immensely frustrating for those of us who work on information about medicines and healthcare. As we know, size in points is a very inexact predictor of actual type size, and there?s a huge amount more to legibility than just size. But regulators are ever keen to impose over-simplistic rules, even when these are based on ignorance. We get ridiculous situations where a leaflet has done very well in testing ? to the extent that respondents have spontaneously commented on the ?nice big type? ? but it is deemed unacceptable because, by regulatory standards, the type is too small. If we then reset the same text in a light, condensed font, tightening up the letterspacing, but making it 2 points ?larger?, then it will be fine! This is treating the whole process of diagnostic testing, and the people who need crucial information about their medicines, with contempt. Rather than just grumbling (though we certainly grumble a lot), we have sought to explain: for example, I took some time to respond in detail, complete with diagrams and examples, to one of their proposals, and David has mentioned his efforts. But regulators apparently don?t want to learn and understand; they simply want to make meaningless rules. They have, ominously, just discovered the term ?leading? ? goodness knows what senseless interpretation they will manage to put on it. The Radio 4 piece which Paul originally mentioned would have been hilarious were it not so scary in its implications. If we?re not careful, we really could find ourselves setting text 2 cm high (is that baseline-to-baseline, or x-height? I think we should be told). Regards Jane _______________________________ Jane Teather JET Documentation Services 54A Ferme Park Road London N4 4ED tel: +44 (0) 20 8348 9213 fax: +44 (0) 20 8374 0342 mobile: +44 (0) 7967 366 252 teather at compuserve.com Fellow of the Communication Research Institute http://www.communication.org.au > _________________ > From waarde at glo.be Fri Apr 4 11:42:01 2008 From: waarde at glo.be (Karel van der Waarde) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 11:42:01 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters reply In-Reply-To: <47F5E462.4050503@compuserve.com> References: <856FAC7F4D054E9BACABFF2503A89687@KatiePC> <47F5E462.4050503@compuserve.com> Message-ID: Dear all, Thanks for the reactions. How can we convince regulators and guideline writers that point sizes are not the most important factor when it comes to understanding texts? Two arguments: - 1 - If all documents would follow the 12 point or 14 point standard, would all these documents really be easier to understand? - 2 - Are all documents that use a smaller typesize more difficult to understand? [Most newspapers, novels, study books, webpages, magazines use a smaller typesize. Should all these be discarded as incomprehensible?] I think that it is necessary to focus on the 'understanding' and 'easy to read' criteria, and not on the pointsizes. The relation between the two is certainly not direct. Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be [One anecdote: The new 'Draft Readability guideline' for medicine leaflets in Europe states that the typesize must be at least 12 points. The text of these leaflets is determined by another law and cannot be made shorter. Following the guideline would therefore mean that the dimensions of these leaflets must increase. This would require larger medicine boxes. Even a small size increase - say 10% - of all boxes would mean that most pharmacies in Europe need to rebuild their shelves, and probably their premises, to store the same number of medicines. Unfortunately, the extra costs for larger paper leaflets and cardboard boxes, new folding machines, new stuffing machines, increased transport costs, and rebuilding storage facilities will be paid by all of us. The price of medicines and health-insurance simply goes up. It is even more unfortunate that the increase in typesize does not help to make medicine leaflets easier to read.] From jk at nqpaofu.com Fri Apr 4 12:24:11 2008 From: jk at nqpaofu.com (Jouke Kleerebezem) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 12:24:11 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: Paul's amusing reference and valid questions about readability regulation [should other factors such as kerning, paper quality, ink (color), font type be included?] of the _material_ text bring me to my question to this list's expert readership, for a current project in which the limit of readability is sought for artistic purpose: a hybrid book/pdf/online publication which aims to benefit of specific media qualities, in the mix. A pdf is zoom-able, a 2pt size text at 400+% reads from a screen and prints well. Web browsers scale text but not images. The book, well, is a book -- no need to again praise its superior intimacy and usability. But it needs a seperate reading device to zoom in it. My question is simple: in your experience, which combination of font, type size, ink color, paper quality gives the most extreme detail in the hands of a skilled off-set printer? Or in another printing technique, provided the result would be 'ink on paper'. Which material qualities would enlarge best under the magnifying glass? Artist James Lee Byars once showed me a 10x10mm piece of paper which had been printed on some Swiss mountain in a dust free room and under other 'perfect' conditions. I forgot how much words it contained but its type size was under 2pt for sure. Then we know about small type engraved rice grains, pin heads etc. I'd be interested in any reference to miniature (text) print and other fabrication/reproduction 'out there'. Like the miniature books exhibition at http://www.indiana.edu/~liblilly/miniatures/index.shtml Today we have the nano bible: http://popsci.typepad.com/popsci/2007/12/nanotech-squeez.html . With reading devices developing parallel to writing technologies, where will practical applications go? Jouke Kleerebezem nomanisanisland at wanadoo.fr -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080404/22b8ee3b/attachment-0008.htm From r.waller at reading.ac.uk Fri Apr 4 12:58:25 2008 From: r.waller at reading.ac.uk (Rob Waller) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 11:58:25 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: <68EA3006-3760-46F7-B1C5-F63C9AA7BFDD@reading.ac.uk> Jouke's post reminds me that what we call 'small print' in the UK, is known as 'fine print' in the USA. There the custom is apparently to print business contracts on Columbia iron presses, using hand-made rag paper, bound in the finest calfskin. Rob Waller -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080404/e69ae505/attachment-0008.htm From carina.andersson at mdh.se Fri Apr 4 13:03:54 2008 From: carina.andersson at mdh.se (Carina Andersson) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 13:03:54 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters reply In-Reply-To: References: <856FAC7F4D054E9BACABFF2503A89687@KatiePC> <47F5E462.4050503@compuserve.com> Message-ID: <80DAB1E7B9936448A084E71CC703AFF226EA81A200@MBXCLUSTER.mdh.local> Dear alla and Karel This discussion seems to be about legibility, readability and "reading value". Does an individual perceive a text, picture or form? Does an individual understand a specific text, picture or form? Does an individual have an interest in the text, picture or form? I see these three concepts as three communicative levels. They are different, but still dependent on each other. You need the first level, legibility, to reach a second level, readability and so on. All the best Carina Andersson PhD-Candidate in Information design School of Innovation, Design and Engineering M?lardalen University Box 325 SE-631 05 Eskilstuna Sweden Phone: +46 (0)16-15 36 89 Cellphone: +46 (0)73- 182 23 19 Fax: +46 (0)16-15 36 50 -----Ursprungligt meddelande----- Fr?n: infodesign-cafe-bounces at list.informationdesign.org [mailto:infodesign-cafe-bounces at list.informationdesign.org] F?r Karel van der Waarde Skickat: den 4 april 2008 11:42 Till: Discussions about information design ?mne: Re: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters reply Dear all, Thanks for the reactions. How can we convince regulators and guideline writers that point sizes are not the most important factor when it comes to understanding texts? Two arguments: - 1 - If all documents would follow the 12 point or 14 point standard, would all these documents really be easier to understand? - 2 - Are all documents that use a smaller typesize more difficult to understand? [Most newspapers, novels, study books, webpages, magazines use a smaller typesize. Should all these be discarded as incomprehensible?] I think that it is necessary to focus on the 'understanding' and 'easy to read' criteria, and not on the pointsizes. The relation between the two is certainly not direct. Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be [One anecdote: The new 'Draft Readability guideline' for medicine leaflets in Europe states that the typesize must be at least 12 points. The text of these leaflets is determined by another law and cannot be made shorter. Following the guideline would therefore mean that the dimensions of these leaflets must increase. This would require larger medicine boxes. Even a small size increase - say 10% - of all boxes would mean that most pharmacies in Europe need to rebuild their shelves, and probably their premises, to store the same number of medicines. Unfortunately, the extra costs for larger paper leaflets and cardboard boxes, new folding machines, new stuffing machines, increased transport costs, and rebuilding storage facilities will be paid by all of us. The price of medicines and health-insurance simply goes up. It is even more unfortunate that the increase in typesize does not help to make medicine leaflets easier to read.] ___________________________________________________________________ Use the following address to post a message to all subscribers: infodesign-cafe at list.informationdesign.org To subscribe, unsubscribe or change your options, visit: http://list.InformationDesign.org/mailman/listinfo/infodesign-cafe For all Information Design matters: http://InformationDesign.org Problems? Write to: InfoDesign-Cafe-Admin at list.InformationDesign.org ___________________________________________________________________ From SWANSONG at ecu.edu Fri Apr 4 14:31:56 2008 From: SWANSONG at ecu.edu (Swanson, Gunnar) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 08:31:56 -0400 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters reply References: <856FAC7F4D054E9BACABFF2503A89687@KatiePC> Message-ID: <556BA53FA6DBA14CBD1605F1735C0FEC76F460@ecufs9.intra.ecu.edu> I've been assuming that this was a discussion of some specific British or European regulatory action regarding some specific variety of text and I don't understand the context so I've stayed out of it. Sweeping statements about the benefits of type size for readability tend to lead to clumsy typesetting that is often more difficult to read than the smaller type it is meant to prevent. ICOGRADA does a monthly poll on its newsletter/website that makes me embarrassed to be a graphic designer. It is consistently inane, misleading, or just plain stupid. It's at http://www.icograda.org/feature/opinion_poll.htm This month's is perhaps the worst.: IS 12 POINT FONT LARGE ENOUGH? This weeks opinion poll comes from Samantha S. Sannella, the President of Design Exchange. Pet Peve: Small Font. I am guilty of it. We are guilty of it. It's in our newsletters, on our business cards and on many of our publications. Is 12 point font large enough? Personally, I type in 18 point font nowadays and change the font size before sending. When did 9, 10 or 11 point font become acceptable? Am I getting old? Actually, I tested my eyes recently and they were perfect, however, the doctor did not test my eye fatigue - which I believe contributes to my recent dislike of miniscule letters. Of course, I have a theory - Go Big or Go Home. Calling all graphic designers: let's go big. What is your take? Is 12 point font large enough? [radio button] I agree with Samantha, 12 point font is just too small! [radio button] I think that font size should be relative to the medium one is working with. [radio button] I think that 12 point font is completely adequate. ---------- I suggest 72 pt Franklin Gothic Demi in black ink on smooth 87% reflectance warm white paper for the following: WTF? It seems, however, that 18 point may be adequate for the following: No, Samantha. I am old. You are stupid. They are not the same. Gunnar ---------- Gunnar Swanson Design Office 1901 East 6th Street Greenville, North Carolina 27858 USA gunnar at gunnarswanson.com +1 252 258 7006 http://www.gunnarswanson.com at East Carolina University: swansong at ecu.edu +1 252 328 2839 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080404/ebb90bef/attachment-0008.htm From katie at raincharm.co.uk Fri Apr 4 15:21:11 2008 From: katie at raincharm.co.uk (Raincharm Communications Limited) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 14:21:11 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: reply to karel and others - size matters Message-ID: <294CEEAA08F045A2971A7B64E7321136@KatiePC> Hi I totally agree with Karel's comment on how it is the readability of the actual content which is the crucial element. It makes no difference how large a font is if the text is complex and poorly written. I also take the point on the ease of making text larger in electronic and digital formats. Despite all the developments in technology and providing information online in a variety of downloadable formats, people still demand print based materials for a lot of documents, particularly government departments launching research findings or new initiatives. I worked on several lengthy documents at the DRC which were supposed to be online only but ended up as expensive print versions. This is without mentioning some of the bilingual print documents which are printed in Welsh and English often running to over 200 pages in some cases. I'd be interested to hear from anyone who is working on easier to read documents. I have several years experience writing and designing Easy Read documents for people with learning disabilities a format which, to my knowledge, has never been applied to the production of patient information leaflets. There is a very real need to design information for the elderly/older people in an easier to read format and patient information leaflets would seem to require this approach. Other audiences who need to be considered are those for whom English is not their first language - migrant workers and asylum seekers/refugees. What information is available in an easier to read format for these people? Happy to share ideas with interested parties. Katie Raincharm Communications Ltd Tel 07971 909007 Registered No. 6267862 VAT No. 913 3364 44 www.raincharm.co.uk -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080404/695f867e/attachment-0008.htm From waarde at glo.be Fri Apr 4 19:29:13 2008 From: waarde at glo.be (Karel van der Waarde) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 19:29:13 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: <31A43BA4-AA08-42C4-B663-B9C5CD61C158@reading.ac.uk> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> <31A43BA4-AA08-42C4-B663-B9C5CD61C158@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: Rob, Thanks for your reply. >I'm not convinced testing is a universal solution - fine for >medicines information perhaps, where a highly regulated product is >marketed over a period of time in a stable format, but many of the >kind of documents this MP is talking about, which include newspaper >advertisements and direct mail, are produced to fast timescales and >may even be in personalised formats. The way the tests are applied to medicines at the moment is far from optimal and probably even detrimental. As Jane Teather mentioned: the results are often ignored or overruled by even more obscure guidelines. >I think it would be useful to explore a risk-based approach. This is >effectively what legal departments in large organisations do when >they assess documents before they go out. For example, in some cases >they approve an abbreviated reference to 'terms and conditions >apply' whereas in other cases they insist the full set is supplied. >About three years ago we surveyed practice among mobile phone >companies and found quite a wide range of strategies. As well as the >two I've mentioned, we also found quite a common practice of >summarising the most important terms of business in larger or bolder >type - but you need some kind of risk assessment to tell you what is >important. This is exactly what patients expect when I discuss alternatives to the current package leaflets, or when test-participants suggest improvements. It would be useful to have a 'creditcard size' card in each medicine box. On the front, it mentions the five or six most important things about a medicine. On the back, it mentions relevant websites, e-mail addresses, phone numbers, patient organizations and government websites. [This is not suitable for all medicines, but would cover approx 80%.] Unfortunately, this is illegal in Europe. The highest risk of poor documents seem to me: - financial costs - wasting energy and materials - wasting time (multiplied by the number of people who read texts) - increasing frustration (= negative fun) I guess that the first two would be of interest to politicians, the first three to companies, and all four to all of us. Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be From conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk Sun Apr 6 08:08:39 2008 From: conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk (Conrad Taylor) Date: Sun, 6 Apr 2008 07:08:39 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: "Bank upgrade excluding blind" Message-ID: May interest Cafe readers who work on the design of financial statements: > "Visually impaired customers of American Express say > they can no longer read their credit card statements > online. > > "In December Amex changed its format for UK statements > from HTML to Portable Document Format or PDF. > > "However, it failed to encode the new PDF documents so > they could be read by "screen readers," special > software used by blind or partially sighted people. Story in full at the BBC News website: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/moneybox/7332216.stm Conrad -- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080406/25974167/attachment-0006.htm From marconi2006 at googlemail.com Mon Apr 7 08:47:05 2008 From: marconi2006 at googlemail.com (Jose de Souza) Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2008 07:47:05 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Animated balloon captions Message-ID: Colleagues, I imagine that you have heard about a company called "Bubbleply.com", this web video-sharing service allows anyone to add various types of captions (i.e., comics balloon like frames embedded with text, pictures or films) to video. A video tutorial is available at http://www.bubbleply.com I am researching on the effectiveness of such "animated balloon captions", which in my case are used in purely visual instructional animations (i.e., no sound or voice narration). I have compared captions versions with words-only, pictures plus words and motion pictures-only. The results suggests that motion pictures-only captions are far better (i.e., mistakes, completion time and transfer of learning) than words-only versions. As we might expect picture plus words is also better than words-only caption, but not as dramatic as motion pictures-only version. I have already collected some literature about it, but I was wondering if you would know any research or recent trends on the design of animated captions. Any suggestion or insights will be appreciated. Thanks. -- Jos? de Souza PhD Student Department of Typography & Graphic Communication The University of Reading From d.sless at communication.org.au Tue Apr 1 11:22:43 2008 From: d.sless at communication.org.au (David Sless) Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2008 20:22:43 +1100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: re live testing In-Reply-To: <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> On 27/03/2008, at 9:10 PM, Rob Waller wrote: > It's also worth saying that as time progresses, the need to test > probably gets greater - a few years ago we were mostly designing > bills that had been rather primitive printouts, and the new designs > were always better than the old. Now, the redesign is quite likely > to be of a bill that has already been through the process, but now > needs updating because products or brands have changed. I think this is true. But with a caveat. Our long range monitoring of such documents shows that they deteriorate quite quickly in use, more so these days with the rapid product and branding changes that Rob mentions. In one of our recent published case histories, we found that a document we originally designed in 1988 had a fairly long life, but by 2003 it had deteriorated from its original excellent performance level to a level where only 42% of customers could use it at an acceptable level. The redesign brought the document up to an acceptable level, but within months of implementation we began to see some deterioration of performance. Mocking up alternative designs for testing, though, can be a real chore. Rob described part of the horror in this type of work > we had to format pages of itemised calls, and it was no one's > favourite task. Add to Rob's un-favourite tasks, the task we sometimes get: hand crafting multiple versions of the same document 'just to illustrate' what each variant will look like. Using software like Quark or InDesign to do this type of repetitive task can drive one to madness. Thankfully, some of the newer software used for driving these dynamic document systems allow for rapid modification and prototyping, saving us all from these horrible tasks. David -- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080401/73f9b0e5/attachment-0012.htm From ralexm at terra.com.br Tue Apr 1 17:39:58 2008 From: ralexm at terra.com.br (Ricardo Martins) Date: Tue, 01 Apr 2008 12:39:58 -0300 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: re live testing In-Reply-To: <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> Message-ID: <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080401/d4a1cc4f/attachment-0012.htm From d.sless at communication.org.au Wed Apr 2 00:43:27 2008 From: d.sless at communication.org.au (David Sless) Date: Wed, 2 Apr 2008 09:43:27 +1100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: re live testing In-Reply-To: <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> Message-ID: <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> On 02/04/2008, at 2:39 AM, Ricardo Martins wrote: > Fortunately, in the last versions, Indesign added some nice > resources to integrate dynamic data through simple databases or XML. > You can populate an TXT file with different data and Indesign loads > it and generate different versions of a document. They can be > printed, exported to PDF or imported by other softwares Thanks for that, Ricardo. I will pass that on to our studio and avoid the workers' compensation cases for work induced insanity. We are using the latest indesign and enjoying many of its features, but I hadn't thought of that. It's obviously there with xml. I just hadn't made the connection. David -- blog: www.communication.org.au/dsblog web: http://www.communication.org.au Professor David Sless BA MSc FRSA CEO ? Communication Research Institute ? ? helping people communicate with people ? Mobile: +61 (0)412 356 795 Phone: +61 (0)3 9489 8640 60 Park Street ? Fitzroy North ? Melbourne ? Australia ? 3068 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080402/f5ce55a0/attachment-0012.htm -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: CRI-lh-logo-col.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 1634 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080402/f5ce55a0/attachment-0012.jpg From ralexm at terra.com.br Wed Apr 2 01:14:17 2008 From: ralexm at terra.com.br (Ricardo Martins) Date: Tue, 01 Apr 2008 20:14:17 -0300 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: re live testing In-Reply-To: <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> Message-ID: <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080401/6c3c7736/attachment-0012.htm -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 1634 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080401/6c3c7736/attachment-0012.jpeg From p.stiff at reading.ac.uk Thu Apr 3 18:33:25 2008 From: p.stiff at reading.ac.uk (Paul Stiff) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 17:33:25 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> Message-ID: <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Today (3 April 2008) on BBC Radio 4?s consumer affairs programme, ?You and yours?, there was an item about ?small print?. This was prompted by Labour MP Nick Palmer?s recent proposal in (the UK) parliament of ?a Bill to make requirements regarding the minimum size of print in certain documents, including those relating to advertising and contracts ... The Bill's objective is ... to ensure that customers are reasonably able to read what [the terms and conditions in advertisements or contracts] say? On radio, the ?You and yours? presenter summarized the Bill?s practical proposal, a legal minimum size for the text of contractual offers, T&Cs, etc: ?at least two millimetres high or twelve point font size?. A speaker representing the Royal National Institute for the Blind then supported the proposal; he could read ?standard size print? only with a magnifying glass. He was followed by MP Nick Palmer, who began with a correction: ?a factual point, it?s two centimetres, rather than two millimetres?. A representative of the Direct Marketing Association was later asked by the Y&Y presenter: ?Would the industry be willing to print larger text, two centimetres high?? DMA person: ?Two centimetres is quite ...? [she was going to say ?large?, but was interrupted by:] Y&Y presenter: ?I?m so sorry, twelve point font size?. And there we leave them, all still a bit confused about how to describe the size of this stuff. [You can hear them via ?listen again? at: ] A point [ho-ho] about describing ?type size? on paper: Attempts to regulate this aspect of the appearance of published text can start with a generalized guideline (e.g., ?You should provide large print/Braille versions of all literature, such as menus, instructions, etc? or ?Large enough to be read by a person wearing spectacles?) but eventually they have to define in numeric terms what they mean by ?large? and ?small?. But most readers of this will know that some ?fonts? at ?twelve point size? look smaller than other ?fonts? at ?ten point size?. That is, bigger is sometimes smaller than smaller. And vice versa. This peculiarity is, of course, not confined to regulation and law. It arises any time anyone needs to make an objective description of this simple typographic dimension. It is possible to be objectively precise about size, but the people who would have to implement typographic-appearance regulations through a specification of some kind are often neither scientists nor even printers or designers. So it would probably be unhelpful to define size in terms such as, for example, degrees of visual angle subtended by the viewed object on the viewer?s retina at a given viewing distance. Anyway, people sometimes want to be able to measure ?type size?, in order to check it themselves and make comparisons. But they usually find it hard to do so. And whatever they measure, they often don?t find it easy to locate an equivalent -- to what they measured -- in the dialog box (formatting palette, whatever) of the software application that they use to produce the required ?large? (or ?small?) print. So, is there a solution to this (old) problem? Paul Stiff From brian at brianparkinson.co.uk Thu Apr 3 19:17:05 2008 From: brian at brianparkinson.co.uk (Brian Parkinson) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 18:17:05 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: <9A8A5853-BBF8-4A78-90EE-667C38F2AE45@brianparkinson.co.uk> Good to hear your voice again Paul. How are you? All well here - lots of work at the moment - some of it interesting. Hope to see you before too long Brian From brian at brianparkinson.co.uk Thu Apr 3 19:17:55 2008 From: brian at brianparkinson.co.uk (Brian Parkinson) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 18:17:55 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: This proposal needs to go further I think - readable type has to go hand in hand with clearly written text. If the content is impenetrable legalese, even 20cm lettering won't help people to understand it. Brian Parkinson On 3 Apr 2008, at April 3 5:33 pm, Paul Stiff wrote: > This was prompted by Labour MP Nick Palmer?s recent proposal in (the > UK) parliament of ?a Bill to make requirements regarding the minimum > size of print in certain documents, including those relating to > advertising and contracts ... The Bill's objective is ... to ensure > that customers are reasonably able to read what [the terms and > conditions in advertisements or contracts] say? From waarde at glo.be Thu Apr 3 20:52:31 2008 From: waarde at glo.be (Karel van der Waarde) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 20:52:31 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: Dear Paul, Brian, It remains a pleasant discussion. It might be worth splitting this issue into two: a. Determining if text can be read. I don't think there is any typesize that would 'enable people to read a text'. The typesize on medical package leaflets is frequently 'too small' for patients, but the same patients can read the back of a lottery ticket without any problems ... b. Developing regulations and laws. Some of the information about medicines must be a specific typesize. The EU-readability guideline states that package leaflets must be in a typsize of "8 point Didot". [I've got no idea why they use a Didot-unit, why they specify non-metric measurements, nor where the '8' came from.] But even with a specified typesize, it is very easy to make a text illegible. Just print 8 point text (or 20 point) in a pale yellow on a slightly off-white background and print every second word upside down and in reverse. Even a 'readability formula' wouldn't notice this ... Unfortunately, specifying a typesize in a regulation also means that it must be measurable. It is no good to state '12 point' if nobody is able to check if a printed text is really 12 points ... The only person who can really tell if a text can be read and understood is a reader. [Well trained and experienced designers can make a good guess, but it remains a guess.] I'm convinced that we have to ask a small number of readers to see if our guesses are correct or need to be modified. Technology has developed a little so we can actually provide most information in most sizes - on request. And that solves the regulatory problem as well. Any law in this area must make it obligatory to involve people (non-designers, readers, potential users) in the design process and ask them to use texts. The laws should simply ask for proof that 'a document enables people to act appropriately'. This proof should indicate which people should be enabled, which actions are relevant, and what appropriate levels of success are. If visually impaired people need to act, than the information must be supplied in a format that 'enables a visually impaired person to act appropriately'. Same for people who have difficulties reading English, or difficulties in reading at all. It's a serious shortcoming of the information design community that we have not been able to convince politicians in the last 30 years or so that graphic design literature is not really suitable as a base for legislation. It's a serious shortcoming of politicians that they still base regulations on the production of large quantities of identically printed paper sheets. Digital technology makes it relatively simple to provide information in several formats (large print, small print, sound), on screen and on paper, and in all required languages. It seems that the UK Parliament is again fighting against the wrong symptoms. They did the same in 1848 when they adopted the 'Nuisances removal and contagious diseases prevention act' that was based on the idea that cholera was caused by bad smells. Unfortunately, removing the bad smell did not protect against cholera. Dumping the waste in the Thames actually caused another 15.000 cholera-casualties in 1848 and 1849. In other words, if you look at 'small print' only, it is unlikely any law can 'ensure that customers are reasonably able to read what they say'. Removing 'small type' from all documents does not ensure that people are able to read what they say'. Involving people in the development process and providing information in all required formats might need to be considered. Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be >Today (3 April 2008) on BBC Radio 4?s consumer affairs programme,? >?You and yours?, there was an item about ?small print?. > >This was prompted by Labour MP Nick Palmer?s recent proposal in (the? >UK) parliament of ?a Bill to make requirements regarding the minimum? >size of print in certain documents, including those relating to? >advertising and contracts ... The Bill's objective is ... to ensure? >that customers are reasonably able to read what [the terms and? >conditions in advertisements or contracts] say? > >debtext/80226-0006.htm#08022642000680> > >On radio, the ?You and yours? presenter summarized the Bill?s? >practical proposal, a legal minimum size for the text of contractual? >offers, T&Cs, etc: ?at least two millimetres high or twelve point? >font size?. > >A speaker representing the Royal National Institute for the Blind? >then supported the proposal; he could read ?standard size print? only? >with a magnifying glass. > >He was followed by MP Nick Palmer, who began with a correction: ?a? >factual point, it?s two centimetres, rather than two millimetres?. > >A representative of the Direct Marketing Association was later asked? >by the Y&Y presenter: ?Would the industry be willing to print larger? >text, two centimetres high?? > >DMA person: ?Two centimetres is quite ...? > >[she was going to say ?large?, but was interrupted by:] > >Y&Y presenter: ?I?m so sorry, twelve point font size?. > >And there we leave them, all still a bit confused about how to? >describe the size of this stuff. [You can hear them via ?listen? >again? at: ] > >A point [ho-ho] about describing ?type size? on paper: > >Attempts to regulate this aspect of the appearance of published text? >can start with a generalized guideline (e.g., ?You should provide? >large print/Braille versions of all literature, such as menus,? >instructions, etc? or ?Large enough to be read by a person wearing? >spectacles?) but eventually they have to define in numeric terms what? >they mean by ?large? and ?small?. > >But most readers of this will know that some ?fonts? at ?twelve point? >size? look smaller than other ?fonts? at ?ten point size?. That is,? >bigger is sometimes smaller than smaller. And vice versa. > >This peculiarity is, of course, not confined to regulation and law.? >It arises any time anyone needs to make an objective description of? >this simple typographic dimension. > >It is possible to be objectively precise about size, but the people? >who would have to implement typographic-appearance regulations? >through a specification of some kind are often neither scientists nor? >even printers or designers. So it would probably be unhelpful to? >define size in terms such as, for example, degrees of visual angle? >subtended by the viewed object on the viewer?s retina at a given? >viewing distance. > >Anyway, people sometimes want to be able to measure ?type size?, in? >order to check it themselves and make comparisons. But they usually? >find it hard to do so. And whatever they measure, they often don?t? >find it easy to locate an equivalent -- to what they measured -- in? >the dialog box (formatting palette, whatever) of the software? >application that they use to produce the required ?large? (or? >?small?) print. > >So, is there a solution to this (old) problem? > >Paul Stiff From katie at raincharm.co.uk Thu Apr 3 21:17:26 2008 From: katie at raincharm.co.uk (Raincharm Communications Limited) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 20:17:26 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters reply Message-ID: <856FAC7F4D054E9BACABFF2503A89687@KatiePC> Hi Just read the post relating to the recent Radio 4 debate on font size and what should be set as a standard. As former publications and editorial manager at the Disability Rights Commission (DRC), I was involved in the writing and implementation of an overall publications strategy which included a style guide on font size, typeface and various other accessibility issues. When the DRC began we decided to set 14 point as a standard font size for all documents, excepting those in Easy Read (aimed at people with learning disabilities) which were set at 16 point. It was always quite a struggle convincing other organisations to do the same mainly due to the cost implications - bigger font size meaning more pages and therefore a higher cost. However, once the budget issues are taken out of the equation one is left with the simple fact that a 14 point font size is much clearer and easier to read. I do remember we struggled with maintaining this approach when buying ad space as the cost is so exorbitant in 14 point. Another bone of contention was font size of footnotes in lengthy research documents but we always stuck to our guns and it seemed to pay off! Now working as a consultant advising businesses and other organisations on how to make their information provision more accessible and inclusive, I do still recommend a 14 point font size. Surely it is more important to improve the quality and accessibility of a document for everyone, not only people with impairments but also those who may have low literacy skills or for whom English is not their first language. This approach only ends up benefiting everyone. Equality of opportunity and inclusivity can only be achieved if people commit to what is an exemplary standard ie what goes above and beyond the 'norm'. It is all about setting a precedent for best practice. Once this has been accepted as the standard then others will follow suit. Best Wishes Katie Grant Director Raincharm Communications Ltd Tel 07971 909007 Registered No. 6267862 VAT No. 913 3364 44 www.raincharm.co.uk -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080403/b76d2e33/attachment-0010.htm From conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk Thu Apr 3 22:57:24 2008 From: conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk (Conrad Taylor) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 21:57:24 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: Paul Stiff wrote, sagely and entertainingly: >Attempts to regulate this aspect of the appearance of published text? >can start with a generalized guideline (e.g., ?You should provide? >large print/Braille versions of all literature, such as menus,? >instructions, etc? or ?Large enough to be read by a person wearing? >spectacles?) but eventually they have to define in numeric terms what? >they mean by ?large? and ?small?. > >But most readers of this will know that some ?fonts? at ?twelve point? >size? look smaller than other ?fonts? at ?ten point size?. That is, >bigger is sometimes smaller than smaller. And vice versa. Since 12pt in one font may be either larger or smaller, more or less legible than 12pt in another font, the obvious answer for the unimaginative and unskilled legislator is to define not only the size, but the font itself. In the British context, I am sure this New Labour government would be very happy to define the specifications as Arial 14pt. They bow to Microsoft in much else, so why not this? This would cap Microsoft's success in getting approval from an exhausted international standards community for their OfficeOpen XML "standard". :-) Conrad -- From d.sless at communication.org.au Fri Apr 4 05:17:44 2008 From: d.sless at communication.org.au (David Sless) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 14:17:44 +1100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: Hi All, To underline and elaborate what Karel has said on this subject. The problem regulators face, put simply, is they don't have the necessary understanding of ID to come up with sensible regulation of information. This is made worse by that the fact (as Donald Rumsfeld might have put it) they don't know they don't know. At CRI we have been working on this problem for some time, with mixed success. You can see some of our efforts on this in our publications, and, as Karel knows because he has done a lot of work on it, we are working on something at the moment that will push the case for better training of regulators a bit further. But it is hard and largely unrewarding work. Most EU regulators with whom I have engaged on this subject regard me as 'unhelpful' and some refuse to attend conferences, if I am a speaker (mind you, I feel like that myself sometimes). The basic shift that needs to occur is from regulating content to regulating performance Put differently it's a matter of looking at ends rather than means. The end is readable text. As we all agree, regulating font size is a poor means of getting to that particular outcome. I could go on but? David -- blog: www.communication.org.au/dsblog web: http://www.communication.org.au -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080404/167a1d69/attachment-0010.htm From r.waller at reading.ac.uk Fri Apr 4 10:07:17 2008 From: r.waller at reading.ac.uk (Rob Waller) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 09:07:17 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: <31A43BA4-AA08-42C4-B663-B9C5CD61C158@reading.ac.uk> Can I add a couple of thoughts to the debate? There is undoubtedly a big problem of naive information design becoming enshrined in the law, and there are plenty of historical and current examples of this. However, as a profession we do need to respond to the kind of concerns the politicians are expressing. As an aside I don't believe the fact that 12pt is a vague definition is a big problem in practice - even 12pt Bembo would be more legible than what we get now. More to the point is that to print most terms of business in 12pt of any typeface would lead to acres of paper, and, as others have suggested, would not ensure they are read. Indeed customer research often shows people are intimidated by long documents, even when clearly written. I'm not convinced testing is a universal solution - fine for medicines information perhaps, where a highly regulated product is marketed over a period of time in a stable format, but many of the kind of documents this MP is talking about, which include newspaper advertisements and direct mail, are produced to fast timescales and may even be in personalised formats. I think it would be useful to explore a risk-based approach. This is effectively what legal departments in large organisations do when they assess documents before they go out. For example, in some cases they approve an abbreviated reference to 'terms and conditions apply' whereas in other cases they insist the full set is supplied. About three years ago we surveyed practice among mobile phone companies and found quite a wide range of strategies. As well as the two I've mentioned, we also found quite a common practice of summarising the most important terms of business in larger or bolder type - but you need some kind of risk assessment to tell you what is important. A risk-based approach means assessing each item and coming to a view about (a) the likelihood of it being misunderstood, (b) the likelihood of the eventuality it caters for actually happening, and (c) the potential damage to the customer (or indeed to the company's relationship with the customer, and its reputation) if it is misunderstood and the eventuality happens. The risk assessment process could be tested with customers, even if every document cannot be. An example of a low risk item might be the part of the contract that states that if the company is sold to another company, the contract will be transferred to the buyer without changes. Not an everyday occurrence, and not one that would bother most people so long as the service continues without material changes. A high risk item might be the penalties for early release from a contract, or how complaints are handled. Most of us would not mind, and would not be penalised for our laziness, if the very low risk items were in 5pt, or for that matter printed on a banana and fired into space. So long as the high risk items were prominent, legible and designed to be taken seriously. An anecdotal example of this is my own claim under insurance that I was sold by my water supplier to cover problems with drains. It turned out (deep in the small print) that if my drain went under someone else's land to reach the main sewer I was not covered. Yet this is the most common arrangement in the newly built town where I live. So almost no one here can actually claim under this policy. A risk assessment of this clause would have told them there is a very high risk of this eventuality, that it threatens the whole point of the policy, and therefore there is highly likely to be damage to the customer relationship. And to make sure it does damage their reputation in some small way, I will mention that the company is Anglian Water and the 'cover' is provided for them by Homeserve. Rob Waller -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080404/5337615e/attachment-0009.htm From teather at compuserve.com Fri Apr 4 10:18:42 2008 From: teather at compuserve.com (Jane Teather) Date: Fri, 04 Apr 2008 09:18:42 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters reply In-Reply-To: <856FAC7F4D054E9BACABFF2503A89687@KatiePC> References: <856FAC7F4D054E9BACABFF2503A89687@KatiePC> Message-ID: <47F5E462.4050503@compuserve.com> Just adding my voice to those of Karel and David ? this is immensely frustrating for those of us who work on information about medicines and healthcare. As we know, size in points is a very inexact predictor of actual type size, and there?s a huge amount more to legibility than just size. But regulators are ever keen to impose over-simplistic rules, even when these are based on ignorance. We get ridiculous situations where a leaflet has done very well in testing ? to the extent that respondents have spontaneously commented on the ?nice big type? ? but it is deemed unacceptable because, by regulatory standards, the type is too small. If we then reset the same text in a light, condensed font, tightening up the letterspacing, but making it 2 points ?larger?, then it will be fine! This is treating the whole process of diagnostic testing, and the people who need crucial information about their medicines, with contempt. Rather than just grumbling (though we certainly grumble a lot), we have sought to explain: for example, I took some time to respond in detail, complete with diagrams and examples, to one of their proposals, and David has mentioned his efforts. But regulators apparently don?t want to learn and understand; they simply want to make meaningless rules. They have, ominously, just discovered the term ?leading? ? goodness knows what senseless interpretation they will manage to put on it. The Radio 4 piece which Paul originally mentioned would have been hilarious were it not so scary in its implications. If we?re not careful, we really could find ourselves setting text 2 cm high (is that baseline-to-baseline, or x-height? I think we should be told). Regards Jane _______________________________ Jane Teather JET Documentation Services 54A Ferme Park Road London N4 4ED tel: +44 (0) 20 8348 9213 fax: +44 (0) 20 8374 0342 mobile: +44 (0) 7967 366 252 teather at compuserve.com Fellow of the Communication Research Institute http://www.communication.org.au > _________________ > From waarde at glo.be Fri Apr 4 11:42:01 2008 From: waarde at glo.be (Karel van der Waarde) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 11:42:01 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters reply In-Reply-To: <47F5E462.4050503@compuserve.com> References: <856FAC7F4D054E9BACABFF2503A89687@KatiePC> <47F5E462.4050503@compuserve.com> Message-ID: Dear all, Thanks for the reactions. How can we convince regulators and guideline writers that point sizes are not the most important factor when it comes to understanding texts? Two arguments: - 1 - If all documents would follow the 12 point or 14 point standard, would all these documents really be easier to understand? - 2 - Are all documents that use a smaller typesize more difficult to understand? [Most newspapers, novels, study books, webpages, magazines use a smaller typesize. Should all these be discarded as incomprehensible?] I think that it is necessary to focus on the 'understanding' and 'easy to read' criteria, and not on the pointsizes. The relation between the two is certainly not direct. Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be [One anecdote: The new 'Draft Readability guideline' for medicine leaflets in Europe states that the typesize must be at least 12 points. The text of these leaflets is determined by another law and cannot be made shorter. Following the guideline would therefore mean that the dimensions of these leaflets must increase. This would require larger medicine boxes. Even a small size increase - say 10% - of all boxes would mean that most pharmacies in Europe need to rebuild their shelves, and probably their premises, to store the same number of medicines. Unfortunately, the extra costs for larger paper leaflets and cardboard boxes, new folding machines, new stuffing machines, increased transport costs, and rebuilding storage facilities will be paid by all of us. The price of medicines and health-insurance simply goes up. It is even more unfortunate that the increase in typesize does not help to make medicine leaflets easier to read.] From jk at nqpaofu.com Fri Apr 4 12:24:11 2008 From: jk at nqpaofu.com (Jouke Kleerebezem) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 12:24:11 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: Paul's amusing reference and valid questions about readability regulation [should other factors such as kerning, paper quality, ink (color), font type be included?] of the _material_ text bring me to my question to this list's expert readership, for a current project in which the limit of readability is sought for artistic purpose: a hybrid book/pdf/online publication which aims to benefit of specific media qualities, in the mix. A pdf is zoom-able, a 2pt size text at 400+% reads from a screen and prints well. Web browsers scale text but not images. The book, well, is a book -- no need to again praise its superior intimacy and usability. But it needs a seperate reading device to zoom in it. My question is simple: in your experience, which combination of font, type size, ink color, paper quality gives the most extreme detail in the hands of a skilled off-set printer? Or in another printing technique, provided the result would be 'ink on paper'. Which material qualities would enlarge best under the magnifying glass? Artist James Lee Byars once showed me a 10x10mm piece of paper which had been printed on some Swiss mountain in a dust free room and under other 'perfect' conditions. I forgot how much words it contained but its type size was under 2pt for sure. Then we know about small type engraved rice grains, pin heads etc. I'd be interested in any reference to miniature (text) print and other fabrication/reproduction 'out there'. Like the miniature books exhibition at http://www.indiana.edu/~liblilly/miniatures/index.shtml Today we have the nano bible: http://popsci.typepad.com/popsci/2007/12/nanotech-squeez.html . With reading devices developing parallel to writing technologies, where will practical applications go? Jouke Kleerebezem nomanisanisland at wanadoo.fr -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080404/22b8ee3b/attachment-0009.htm From r.waller at reading.ac.uk Fri Apr 4 12:58:25 2008 From: r.waller at reading.ac.uk (Rob Waller) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 11:58:25 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: <68EA3006-3760-46F7-B1C5-F63C9AA7BFDD@reading.ac.uk> Jouke's post reminds me that what we call 'small print' in the UK, is known as 'fine print' in the USA. There the custom is apparently to print business contracts on Columbia iron presses, using hand-made rag paper, bound in the finest calfskin. Rob Waller -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080404/e69ae505/attachment-0009.htm From carina.andersson at mdh.se Fri Apr 4 13:03:54 2008 From: carina.andersson at mdh.se (Carina Andersson) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 13:03:54 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters reply In-Reply-To: References: <856FAC7F4D054E9BACABFF2503A89687@KatiePC> <47F5E462.4050503@compuserve.com> Message-ID: <80DAB1E7B9936448A084E71CC703AFF226EA81A200@MBXCLUSTER.mdh.local> Dear alla and Karel This discussion seems to be about legibility, readability and "reading value". Does an individual perceive a text, picture or form? Does an individual understand a specific text, picture or form? Does an individual have an interest in the text, picture or form? I see these three concepts as three communicative levels. They are different, but still dependent on each other. You need the first level, legibility, to reach a second level, readability and so on. All the best Carina Andersson PhD-Candidate in Information design School of Innovation, Design and Engineering M?lardalen University Box 325 SE-631 05 Eskilstuna Sweden Phone: +46 (0)16-15 36 89 Cellphone: +46 (0)73- 182 23 19 Fax: +46 (0)16-15 36 50 -----Ursprungligt meddelande----- Fr?n: infodesign-cafe-bounces at list.informationdesign.org [mailto:infodesign-cafe-bounces at list.informationdesign.org] F?r Karel van der Waarde Skickat: den 4 april 2008 11:42 Till: Discussions about information design ?mne: Re: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters reply Dear all, Thanks for the reactions. How can we convince regulators and guideline writers that point sizes are not the most important factor when it comes to understanding texts? Two arguments: - 1 - If all documents would follow the 12 point or 14 point standard, would all these documents really be easier to understand? - 2 - Are all documents that use a smaller typesize more difficult to understand? [Most newspapers, novels, study books, webpages, magazines use a smaller typesize. Should all these be discarded as incomprehensible?] I think that it is necessary to focus on the 'understanding' and 'easy to read' criteria, and not on the pointsizes. The relation between the two is certainly not direct. Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be [One anecdote: The new 'Draft Readability guideline' for medicine leaflets in Europe states that the typesize must be at least 12 points. The text of these leaflets is determined by another law and cannot be made shorter. Following the guideline would therefore mean that the dimensions of these leaflets must increase. This would require larger medicine boxes. Even a small size increase - say 10% - of all boxes would mean that most pharmacies in Europe need to rebuild their shelves, and probably their premises, to store the same number of medicines. Unfortunately, the extra costs for larger paper leaflets and cardboard boxes, new folding machines, new stuffing machines, increased transport costs, and rebuilding storage facilities will be paid by all of us. The price of medicines and health-insurance simply goes up. It is even more unfortunate that the increase in typesize does not help to make medicine leaflets easier to read.] ___________________________________________________________________ Use the following address to post a message to all subscribers: infodesign-cafe at list.informationdesign.org To subscribe, unsubscribe or change your options, visit: http://list.InformationDesign.org/mailman/listinfo/infodesign-cafe For all Information Design matters: http://InformationDesign.org Problems? Write to: InfoDesign-Cafe-Admin at list.InformationDesign.org ___________________________________________________________________ From SWANSONG at ecu.edu Fri Apr 4 14:31:56 2008 From: SWANSONG at ecu.edu (Swanson, Gunnar) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 08:31:56 -0400 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters reply References: <856FAC7F4D054E9BACABFF2503A89687@KatiePC> Message-ID: <556BA53FA6DBA14CBD1605F1735C0FEC76F460@ecufs9.intra.ecu.edu> I've been assuming that this was a discussion of some specific British or European regulatory action regarding some specific variety of text and I don't understand the context so I've stayed out of it. Sweeping statements about the benefits of type size for readability tend to lead to clumsy typesetting that is often more difficult to read than the smaller type it is meant to prevent. ICOGRADA does a monthly poll on its newsletter/website that makes me embarrassed to be a graphic designer. It is consistently inane, misleading, or just plain stupid. It's at http://www.icograda.org/feature/opinion_poll.htm This month's is perhaps the worst.: IS 12 POINT FONT LARGE ENOUGH? This weeks opinion poll comes from Samantha S. Sannella, the President of Design Exchange. Pet Peve: Small Font. I am guilty of it. We are guilty of it. It's in our newsletters, on our business cards and on many of our publications. Is 12 point font large enough? Personally, I type in 18 point font nowadays and change the font size before sending. When did 9, 10 or 11 point font become acceptable? Am I getting old? Actually, I tested my eyes recently and they were perfect, however, the doctor did not test my eye fatigue - which I believe contributes to my recent dislike of miniscule letters. Of course, I have a theory - Go Big or Go Home. Calling all graphic designers: let's go big. What is your take? Is 12 point font large enough? [radio button] I agree with Samantha, 12 point font is just too small! [radio button] I think that font size should be relative to the medium one is working with. [radio button] I think that 12 point font is completely adequate. ---------- I suggest 72 pt Franklin Gothic Demi in black ink on smooth 87% reflectance warm white paper for the following: WTF? It seems, however, that 18 point may be adequate for the following: No, Samantha. I am old. You are stupid. They are not the same. Gunnar ---------- Gunnar Swanson Design Office 1901 East 6th Street Greenville, North Carolina 27858 USA gunnar at gunnarswanson.com +1 252 258 7006 http://www.gunnarswanson.com at East Carolina University: swansong at ecu.edu +1 252 328 2839 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080404/ebb90bef/attachment-0009.htm From katie at raincharm.co.uk Fri Apr 4 15:21:11 2008 From: katie at raincharm.co.uk (Raincharm Communications Limited) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 14:21:11 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: reply to karel and others - size matters Message-ID: <294CEEAA08F045A2971A7B64E7321136@KatiePC> Hi I totally agree with Karel's comment on how it is the readability of the actual content which is the crucial element. It makes no difference how large a font is if the text is complex and poorly written. I also take the point on the ease of making text larger in electronic and digital formats. Despite all the developments in technology and providing information online in a variety of downloadable formats, people still demand print based materials for a lot of documents, particularly government departments launching research findings or new initiatives. I worked on several lengthy documents at the DRC which were supposed to be online only but ended up as expensive print versions. This is without mentioning some of the bilingual print documents which are printed in Welsh and English often running to over 200 pages in some cases. I'd be interested to hear from anyone who is working on easier to read documents. I have several years experience writing and designing Easy Read documents for people with learning disabilities a format which, to my knowledge, has never been applied to the production of patient information leaflets. There is a very real need to design information for the elderly/older people in an easier to read format and patient information leaflets would seem to require this approach. Other audiences who need to be considered are those for whom English is not their first language - migrant workers and asylum seekers/refugees. What information is available in an easier to read format for these people? Happy to share ideas with interested parties. Katie Raincharm Communications Ltd Tel 07971 909007 Registered No. 6267862 VAT No. 913 3364 44 www.raincharm.co.uk -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080404/695f867e/attachment-0009.htm From waarde at glo.be Fri Apr 4 19:29:13 2008 From: waarde at glo.be (Karel van der Waarde) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 19:29:13 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Size matters still? In-Reply-To: <31A43BA4-AA08-42C4-B663-B9C5CD61C158@reading.ac.uk> References: <28E2DBA6-C8C6-4060-A1A3-0D5FE3413C4C@lineone.net> <6BB57768-F462-410D-897B-E1BB3C8EA50F@communication.org.au> <38BFDF9E-0577-4F73-820F-31B04B1A67FE@reading.ac.uk> <415B5801-A101-47E3-A913-116726692100@communication.org.au> <47F2574E.4060601@terra.com.br> <4822C6AA-E8FE-4B3B-8ADF-805EF8AA6966@communication.org.au> <47F2C1C9.3080901@terra.com.br> <43C0CD19-8737-4BB3-9759-56787B13C878@reading.ac.uk> <31A43BA4-AA08-42C4-B663-B9C5CD61C158@reading.ac.uk> Message-ID: Rob, Thanks for your reply. >I'm not convinced testing is a universal solution - fine for >medicines information perhaps, where a highly regulated product is >marketed over a period of time in a stable format, but many of the >kind of documents this MP is talking about, which include newspaper >advertisements and direct mail, are produced to fast timescales and >may even be in personalised formats. The way the tests are applied to medicines at the moment is far from optimal and probably even detrimental. As Jane Teather mentioned: the results are often ignored or overruled by even more obscure guidelines. >I think it would be useful to explore a risk-based approach. This is >effectively what legal departments in large organisations do when >they assess documents before they go out. For example, in some cases >they approve an abbreviated reference to 'terms and conditions >apply' whereas in other cases they insist the full set is supplied. >About three years ago we surveyed practice among mobile phone >companies and found quite a wide range of strategies. As well as the >two I've mentioned, we also found quite a common practice of >summarising the most important terms of business in larger or bolder >type - but you need some kind of risk assessment to tell you what is >important. This is exactly what patients expect when I discuss alternatives to the current package leaflets, or when test-participants suggest improvements. It would be useful to have a 'creditcard size' card in each medicine box. On the front, it mentions the five or six most important things about a medicine. On the back, it mentions relevant websites, e-mail addresses, phone numbers, patient organizations and government websites. [This is not suitable for all medicines, but would cover approx 80%.] Unfortunately, this is illegal in Europe. The highest risk of poor documents seem to me: - financial costs - wasting energy and materials - wasting time (multiplied by the number of people who read texts) - increasing frustration (= negative fun) I guess that the first two would be of interest to politicians, the first three to companies, and all four to all of us. Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be From conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk Sun Apr 6 08:08:39 2008 From: conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk (Conrad Taylor) Date: Sun, 6 Apr 2008 07:08:39 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: "Bank upgrade excluding blind" Message-ID: May interest Cafe readers who work on the design of financial statements: > "Visually impaired customers of American Express say > they can no longer read their credit card statements > online. > > "In December Amex changed its format for UK statements > from HTML to Portable Document Format or PDF. > > "However, it failed to encode the new PDF documents so > they could be read by "screen readers," special > software used by blind or partially sighted people. Story in full at the BBC News website: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/moneybox/7332216.stm Conrad -- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080406/25974167/attachment-0007.htm From marconi2006 at googlemail.com Mon Apr 7 08:47:05 2008 From: marconi2006 at googlemail.com (Jose de Souza) Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2008 07:47:05 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Animated balloon captions Message-ID: Colleagues, I imagine that you have heard about a company called "Bubbleply.com", this web video-sharing service allows anyone to add various types of captions (i.e., comics balloon like frames embedded with text, pictures or films) to video. A video tutorial is available at http://www.bubbleply.com I am researching on the effectiveness of such "animated balloon captions", which in my case are used in purely visual instructional animations (i.e., no sound or voice narration). I have compared captions versions with words-only, pictures plus words and motion pictures-only. The results suggests that motion pictures-only captions are far better (i.e., mistakes, completion time and transfer