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Accessibility & Sustainability: Smart Design is Good Business
Like other consumers of the performing arts, I’ve been receiving season sales brochures for the last several months. I’m amazed at how many of them evidence the same serious problem:
You can’t read them for a variety of reasons:
1) Tiny, tightly-leaded typography – 8 or 9 point type is quite common
2) Colored type on colored backgrounds with low color-value differentials
3) Large copy blocks reversed out in small type sizes.
Living in Washington, I’m not writing about small, understaffed organizations with rookie marketers at the helm who are making these mistakes. Nationally prominent organizations put out products that are unreadable.
In the spirit of self-disclosure, I admit that for many of my younger years, I was among the arrogantly clueless when it came to designing for readability. I could read the type, so what’s the problem?
Now that I’m 53 years old, I’m much more sympathetic than I used to be about this issue. I must wear glasses to read, and even with glasses I give up on most of these brochures.
Paco Underhill, in his wonderful book, “Why We Buy,� expends considerable ink on the habits and limitations of 50-and-older consumers. Underhill is a pioneer and thought-leader in the marketplace anthropology business. His firm, Envirosell, is probably the best-respected in the world. Reading his book, I can see why.
Underhill points out several important effects of aging.
Retinas in older people admit about 30% less light than in their younger counterparts. That’s why you’ll see older people read with strong light sources. Plus, corneas yellow in older people and reduce an older person’s ability to see color differences –especially in the yellow and ivory ranges. High color contrasts are important for readability.
Evidently, one hotel with gold numbers on ivory-colored room doors were so difficult to read that older guests returned to the reception area frustrated at not being able to locate their particular room. (You can bet these room numbers weren’t set in 9 point type, either.)
So, what’s wrong with this picture?
We’re trying to build audiences. As a sector we know that our prime respondent consumers are usually considerably older than 50 years of age. Yet, we allow our graphic designers to construct design solutions that not only don’t work for us, they work against us.
A lot of time and energy is expended writing blurbs and information with the intention of adding value. We write to persuade people to buy, then we make it very difficult for people to read what we write.
Underhill writes flat out that this issue is a “kill� issue for design firms. Those that wise up will prosper. Those that don’t….
This issue has important communications implications for the cultural sector. Type size affects copy length, grid strategy, and series packaging strategies (you can’t have 8 events on one spread with long copy for each and representative imagery and make it all fit). What’s more, design choices that attract younger consumers may repel older consumers. We may be looking at split runs in the not-so-distant future if we want to both keep existing audiences and build new audiences.
I strongly recommend Underhill’s book. When we look at cost-per-dollar-capture rates for campaigns we design and execute, it is very important that we avoid shooting ourselves in the foot.
It all comes back to the prime directive in marketing: Know thy customer.
Posted on April 24, 2006 10:13 AM | Permalink
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Comments
Neill,
I couldn't agree with you more. I'm sometimes stunned by the small type sizes that are used in both printed marketing pieces and on websites as well. What also bothers me in terms of webpage design is when I have to read white text against a black background -- I find it very difficult and I don't even wear reading glasses.