Alphabet updated

A few years ago I was at a talk on transport design organised by the Design Business Association - one questioner asked why it was that the icons were the same in every station or airport you went to. It's so boring and uncreative, he said, and just a cop out by lazy designers.

The same goes for the alphabet too, and the practice of writing from left to right. It's lazy blogging, I know, but I thought you'd be interested in this item from The Onion I found on the Information Design Watch blog from Dynamic Diagrams (always very good).

If I may be so bold

This is a nice demonstration of encroaching-boldness syndrome from Barclay's banking website. Everything is very important, except for 'This is the', 'of', 'for the' and 'They are presented in'.

Another Tom Fishburne cartoon

I've mentioned Tom Fishburne's wonderful Brand Camp cartoons before - here's one I used in a public lecture I was asked to deliver in Reading last week. The point I wanted to make was that it's actually OK for there to be some small print - that is, for information to be layered so some of it is more prominent than the rest, or structured so you read different bits of it at different points in your journey to a decision, to new knowledge or whatever your goal is. It's actually considerate to the reader to reflect their priorities, or to guide them through the big picture. But the bad stuff shouldn't only live in the small print.

Instead, the large print structureth, and the small print filleth in the detail.

A typographic pedantry test

Our forms design portfolio

Well, now the MPs' exes have been published and you can see our work in its full glory - the blacked out bits spoil it a little, but still...

Making reading digestible

Still on a scriptural theme... the Reader's Digest Bible cuts out the ‘boring bits’ – the genealogies or details of the Old Testament law – in an effort to make it less of a weariness of the flesh. But quite often when you look at other translations, the boring bits are actually graphically signalled, helping people read strategically (ie, helping them skip those parts).


























In this page from Numbers, I've highlighted the section of the RD Bible that is the equivalent of a spread from an edition of the NIV (I designed the one shown some years ago for Hodder & Stoughton). The sections shaded pink are the ones left out of the RD version – I hope the image is clear enough to see that the list of tribes is spaced and indented in a way that makes it easy for the reader to simply skip over, noting the authenticity of the historical record (the main function of that passage for the modern reader). The spacing was not introduced by me but by the scholars and theologians responsible for the translation.
























On another occasion I tried to take an even more explicit information design approach to Bible design. The Contemporary English Version is translated to be easier for people without a religious background to understand – it avoids theological terms, for example. I tried to make it look less bibly and to use genre cues to help readers approach it in a more strategic way. I could not avoid double columns (for space reasons) but I was able to use single column for poetry, so the line endings would be clearer. I used a three column ‘fine print’ approach for the boring bits, and bold headings.

Confessions of a distracted geek

I am very proud of myself - I just found the Arial vs Helvetica quiz and scored 9 out of 10. Or should I be ashamed because I got one wrong? There's no feedback so I don't which one.

The Helvetica film is a wonderful celebration of typography. I enjoyed it hugely until I realised that it was never going to end, and that they were never going to stop the examples and the interviews. So I left early and never found out who dunnit. That's me and typographic geekery all over - I used to be a true typographic geek but got distracted.

Great new book for forms lovers

I recently had the pleasure of meeting Borries Schwesinger, author of what looks like a landmark book on forms design, Formulare Gestalten. I say 'looks like' because I don't read German, but the scope of the book is visible from the extensive examples, both historical and modern, and by its comprehensive assemblies of graphic styles. It is beautifully produced, and is already attracting awards. Borries is currently working on an English language version, and I'm looking forward to it.

One hundred years of progress

I've found a box of prehistoric documents, including a talk I gave to the ISTC in 1976. It was a little depressing reading it again, to find how little my ideas have progressed in 30 years. But it was nice to find these examples of information design from railway manuals from 1855 and 1972 (from Michael Macdonald-Ross's collection). One of them is very usable – pocket sized, with simple language, and accessible summaries in the margin. Progress?

Here's a scan of the talk, in case anyone's interested.

Craphology

Paul Luna found this old book on graphology in a second-hand bookshop. The cover is interestingly and appropriately worn – appropriately, because at first glance I took it to say... well, read the first four letters for yourself. Graphology, if you recall, is the 'science' of analysing handwriting, which some organisations apparently take seriously when considering job applications. This particular book claims to tell you how to judge someone's confidence, altruism, degree of introversion, and many other things, but it makes little mention of 'was writing this on a train', 'was using a rubbish biro', 'is obviously French' or 'was trained as a graphic designer'.

Indent, outdent, shake it all about

I've been reviewing a new graphic design textbook: Graphic design: the new basics by Ellen Lupton and Jennifer Cole Phillips. I tend to flip to the contents list, index and bibliography first to get an overview. Here's how the bibliography starts.



There's indenting and outdenting, and I know which works for me. Well, I did say it was a graphic design textbook. Not information design.

I should say that it looks like a good graphic design textbook - and although it seems to be something of a user-free zone, it gives a very good grounding in the aesthetics of graphic form.

Whose Tom Jones?

If you didn't know that Henry Fielding is the author, and Tom Jones is the book, you might be confused by this Oxford World's Classics book cover that gives them equal billing. But seen in a bookshop, with others in the series, the relationship of author to title is clear:



So here, the status of author and title are indicated solely by position. But collecting together other editions gives a nice demonstration of how, in certain circumstances, typographic, layout and verbal codes are interchangeable.

























The ones that use Fielding's original full title are the least ambiguous. In this last one, it's the picture that really disambiguates:

Small print walks tall

There's been an interesting discussion on the infodesign cafe list about a recent attempt by a British Member of Parliament (Nick Palmer) to introduce a minimum type size for 'small print'. On the advice of the RNIB (the main advocate group for the partially sighted in the UK) and the Plain English Campaign, he suggests a minimum of 12pt. This recommendation surfaces from time to time, but is usually unaccompanied by suggestions about what to do about the paper mountain that would ensue.

As several correspondents on the list observed, 12pt type is not a very precise term, and height does not in itself bring legibility... as film posters demonstrate:



I've sometimes wondered why Hollywood stars insist on taller type to assert their importance on film posters. Has anyone ever insisted on a contractual right to legible type?

Design police

Thanks to Beth at the Brand Union for sending me this truly wonderful link to the Design Police*. It's obviously hit the spot because it's on practically every design blog - and has revealed one or two sense of humour failures, judging by some of the comments. This is just a close up of 5 pages of stickers.

*The Design Police are Stephen Woowat and Karl Goldstraw. There is an interview with them on FontShop's Unzipped blog.

I wonder if this doesn't represent a real insight into simple, engaging ways to represent good practice. Having said that, each rule invites the question 'why', and the answers would range from legibility research to simple 'nice boys/girls don't do that'. For example, using inch marks for quotations doesn't actually do anyone any harm, but it is a signifier of competence that people will judge you by – like using the wrong knife at dinner.

Inspired by the Design Police, I'm now speculating about repurposing road signs (not original, I know) to warn readers of problems ahead in complex writing. Here are some signs whose meaning I hope is clear:

Web more visual? I don't think so

I occasionally hear people assert, as if a truism, that the web is a much more visual medium than text. I don't think it is. In fact the opposite is often true if you compare two versions of the same document. For example, here's a story from a recent issue of The Guardian newspaper.

The story (about the growth in music downloads) is illustrated by a graph comparing the years 2005 and 2006 in different countries, and also comparing mobile and online downloads. It is also decorated by images of a band, some people dancing in test tubes, and someone singing.
























But compare with the online version. No images (except a portrait of the journalist we didn't see in the paper version), no graph (surely that contains a key message, even if the pictures don't. And the story is surrounded by navigation - links enticing you to stop reading this story and go somewhere else.













On another matter, the pictures in the paper are a veritable semiotic feast: what are the fascist-looking symbols in front of the band? have the test-tube ladies escaped from a story about cloning? and I love the singer's Remembrance Day poppy. Nothing is captioned so we'll never know the explanation.

The Rupert principle

I sometimes find myself referring to a particular pattern of explanation as a Rupert, and this understandably puzzles people who didn't grow up in the UK at the time I did. Rupert Bear was a classic comic strip that was published in the Daily Express (and may still be, for all I know). It includes three parallel versions of the same story: a picture, a couplet, and a full text version. The combination allows different ways for children and parents to share the story, and is a classic pattern for information designers.
Here's what it looks like:

The bigger the Small Print the smaller the small print

Quite a few copywriters have the original idea of calling terms and conditions 'The Small Print'. Of course, you know when you see this, that you've seen the last bit of plain English you'll see for quite some time. In fact there seems to be a law of inverse proportions here: the larger the title, the more assertive the implicit claim to have addressed the problem, the smaller the smaller print actually is. Here's one we got from Goldfish, the credit card people:





















In this example, from Vodafone, the designer makes his or her contempt for the reader pretty clear by devoting a third of the page to white space, rather than allowing the type to be more legible but fill the page.

Ranged left vs ragged right

My heading looks like a mistake ('ranged left' and 'ragged right' are synonyms). But although they refer to the same thing, I think they mean something different.

Whether or not justified or unjustified type works best is a perennial question. The term refers to the practice of padding out lines with extra space to achieve a straight right-hand edge.

It’s less of an issue that it used to be – owing largely to thirty years or so of modernist-influenced design education, and the displacement of compositors (printers who used to set metal type) by graphic designers, unjustified type is the default option these days. Newspapers and printed books are the only genres where justified type is still more or less compulsory – at least for certain types of content. Textbooks are more likely to be unjustified than novels, and newspapers use justification as a marker of formality – The Times uses justified type for news stories and the main editorial, but unjustified type for features and commentary.

Defenders of justified type have not found much support in reading research – psychologists looking for an effect on reading speed or accuracy have found it makes little difference. But typography isn’t just about making reading easy, or providing an efficient channel for words to pass from page to brain – it’s also about articulating meaning. It is part of the language resource that we use to communicate relationships between parts of a text. In particular, it is what makes written language more than just a secondary form, a transcription of speech. Looked at in this way, is there a role for justification?

I think there is a clue in the names we use. Unjustified type is often known under other names, ‘ranged left’ and ‘ragged right’ being the most common. The names didn’t just happen, but were a form of spin by modernist designers who were uncomfortable that the term ‘unjustified’ seemed to imply a lack of quality. In linguistic terms, ‘unjustified’ is the marked form that implies it is the exception not the rule, whereas ‘ranged left’ is a simple neutral description of the way the type is set. The very term ‘justified’ implies something correct, and properly finished, and in an age of symmetry and ornament anything else would have been seen as unfinished – like unplaned timber, or a garment with no hem.

As descriptive terms, ‘ranged left’ and ‘ragged right’ do quite different jobs, and the difference is instructive. ‘Ranged left’ refers to what is going on inside the column of type – the letters are ranged evenly from the left-hand margin – and makes no reference to the space outside the column. ‘Ragged right’, though, draws attention to the resulting untidy column edge.

In the ‘ranged left’ world view, then, the even texture of type in the column is the most important thing. The column of type is where reading happens, in isolation from other elements on the page.

‘Ragged right’, on the other hand, focuses us on the column edge and, in my view, the term implies a case for justified type.

Edges are critical in graphic design. Pages are made up of different elements, usually aligned in deliberate ways to contribute to the reading experience, whether through meaning, navigation or a simple sense of visual order. The space to the right of a column of type may have a job to do – a job of separating elements, of framing the text, of linking though the continuity of white space. This job can often be done better by a well defined rectangle.

For example, in multi-column layouts, ragged right is fine, so long as the lefthand columns are straight – too much indented type (of the kind you get with legal text) creates a ragged left effect, and the intercolumn space is a less effective visual element.

Here’s a simple demonstration of what I mean.


1: Ranged left is fine so long as you have a straight lefthand column to define the column (most of the time, in fact).


2: Where you have frequent multilevel indention in multicolumn text, it effectively creates a ragged left edge and the intercolumn space no longer forms a clear shape.


3: Justified type restores the vertical alignment.

This note was inspired by a recent discussion on the Infodesign Café. The most thorough and insightful account of the debate is Paul Stiff's 1996 paper: Stiff P (1996) 'The end of the line: a survey of unjustified typography', Information Design Journal, vol 8: 125-152

Reversed type for headings

Usability research sometimes shows that people are ignoring reversed headings. When reading aloud, they will often just skip the heading as if they haven't noticed it. This is probably an example of the figure-ground illusion (often illustrated using the famous candlestick-faces diagram).

You can see this at work in typography when lists are printed this way. I remembering seeing the football league table printed this way – it was very hard to read both the white and black type together. Look at the table to see what order Everton, Bolton, Reading and Newcastle are in.

But rather than dismiss reversed type as unusable, we should instead see this as a phenomenon we can use wisely to good effect. In fact it is most often used for navigation, where we are designing for a two stage reading process (find it, then read it). Here, we don't actually want everyone to read everything, so the figure-ground phenomenon actually supports the ignoring of irrelevant detail until the right section is found.

But just in case people do fail to read the headings, it's wise to repeat the content in the text that follows.

A new excuse for not taking enough exercise

Try this:

"Start by lying face down on the floor with your hands by your shoulders, the palm of your hands flat on the floor. Your feet should be about a foot (30cm) apart and when you push up to the top of the position you should keep your head in line with your body; it's easier to maintain this position by looking down. As you execute the push-up, pull your tummy button towards your back and squeeze your bottom muscles. Then lower down, about two inches (5cm) off the floor. This is the basic push-up. If, however, you are coming at this with no experience, you should do the push-up resting on your knees instead of your feet. Apply the same technique and keep your head in line with your back. To increase the difficulty of the exercise change the position of your hands. By moving your hands closer together, you'll feel the effort in the back of your arms as well as your chest. Or turn the palms of your hands on the floor so your fingers are facing each other; this will place greater emphasis on your chest muscles. Alternatively, if you really want to increase the intensity ask someone to apply a light pressure on your back. The added resistance will make the move harder and will develop the toning even quicker."

It's from a recent article in The Times by Gabby Logan (10.06.06).

A long time ago, spelling and punctuation were unstandardised. Now we're regarded as uneducated if we can't get it right. It would be nice to think that one day people will be writing to The Times about pieces like this one:

"Sir: I was dismayed to read the article on push-ups in yesterday's Times. As every schoolboy knows, procedural instructions should always be presented in numbered steps, with informative headings and a diagram."