Design That Sells
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Seeing is Believing - Proof to all Designers Who Insist On Using The Smallest Font Possible
2010 at 10:39 am Posted by Sherri Sharp
If I had a dollar for every time I sent a print piece back to the designer with a note to increase the font size...I think I can get behind this initiative.
Writing at the Retail Email blog, Chad White offers some interesting facts about the Baby-Boomer generation. First, by 2015, nearly half of the US population will be age 50 or older (AARP). Second, Boomers currently control over 80% of personal financial assets and account for more than 50% of the country's discretionary spending power (ThirdAge).
According to White, marketers have failed to address a simple issue critical to continued patronage from this growing, affluent audience: readable font sizes. "[They] regularly use small text on their websites and in their emails and other marketing materials," he says, "creating unnecessary legibility issues for some of their most valuable customers."
With this in mind, he has created the acronym-friendly Boomer Legibility Initiative for a New Decade (BLIND). Its mission? To increase font size by one point in 2010, by another in 2015 and by one more in 2020.
"Increasing font sizes is also becoming vital as more email and websites are viewed on mobile devices, which often scale content down, making text even harder to read," he notes at the initiative's LinkedIn page, where he also recommends limiting the use of:
• Reverse type, with a lighter text on a darker background.
• Low-contrast pages, with little difference between colors used for text and background.
• Background images with a text overlay.
"Not considering the needs of Boomers when designing marketing materials means lost revenue for marketers and a poor user experience for many Boomers," he concludes, "not to mention other visually challenged people like myself."
When it comes to selling Boomer customers, the eyes have it.
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2009 at 10:21 pm Posted by Colin Warner
A few weeks ago, my Father, a 56 year old entrepreneur, asked if I could throw together a brand identity and some marketing materials for his most recent endeavor: a small sandwich/concession/ice cream shop. After due conceptualization, research, and a few hours tinkering around in InDesign (I am not exactly "trained" as a graphic designer), I developed three logo concepts for him to review and incorporated each into a complementary, basic tri-fold menu. When I presented him the fruits of my labor, the only thing he said in response was "I hate those menus and I don't know why."
Great. Not only was this project pro-bono; I had to play the ever-so-familiar guessing game of "what do I do now?" You know; you've been there. So, I changed my focus and asked myself "what would he be looking for as a consumer?" I wanted to know why he made that face before even reading the copy of the menu. While doing a little research, I came accross a very interesting empirical study regarding the instantaneous impact of typeface aesthetics on a consumer's perception and emotional response which can be found HERE. Within the results of this study, I discovered the answer I was looking for. The participants of the study consisted of mainly hospital employees or students between the ages of 21 to 40 years (all within my age bracket and below my fathers). After exposing these participants to a number of typefaces, they found that "Georgia" font (the font I used in the menu) is congruent with the trait words practical, formal, and assertive, while Arial (my dad's prefernce) is congruent with the trait words stable, conformist, and unimaginative.
Hmm. Does this make baby boomers more conformists or unimaginative when it comes to typeface? I won't go that far but I will say this: there is definitely an underlying, distinct difference between generations and typeface/graphic design.
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