As a designer and communicator, I love looking at type. If I had to choose between visiting a BMW showroom and caressing the curves of their latest vehicle or going online and oogling the most recent releases of type from the foundaries, I would choose option 2 every time.

Typography can be very human. It can be boring or expressive, slim or over weight, quiet or loud, sensual or rigid, male or female… I think you get the point. Knowing these things, and knowing the sorts of visual clues to look for when you are looking at type, helps you correctly identify which type face would be the best for whatever you are doing.

I was reading a post over at The Happy Donor about Type and Layout Tricks. Dan Shaw discusses some of the finer points of one of my favourite books, “Type & Layout: Are You Communicating or Just Making Pretty Shapes” by Colin Wheildon.

We almost all know that letters should be set in serif type, like a Times New Roman and headlines should be set in a sans serif, like a Verdana or Helvetica. But are we sure?

I have tried to convince a few charities to test that. Usually with little success. “What would be the point of that? We all know serif is the GOLDEN rule!”

First things first – test it. You might be surprised what your donors like. Maybe it will be serif, maybe not. Test doing a large print version (ala Readers Digest) of your letter. Try using different fonts.

Test, test, test and you will learn, learn, learn!!!

I will leave you with this. A few years ago, the CNIB (Canadian Institute for the Blind) teamed up with The Ontario College of Art and Design to do a little more current research into how we read type, what works and what doesn’t. You can download a copy of their findings by clicking here if you want. But to nutshell it for you, they found that typefaces like Verdana and Arial can be more readable than a Times New Roman. And for people with low vision require at least a 16pt to 18pt type size for maximum readablilty.

When was the last time you mailed a letter using a 16pt Helvetica to your donors? Never? I suggest you take a look at the report and then test, test, test… your donors will thank you for it.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 23rd, 2008 at 9:13 am and is filed under Basic Design, Testing, direct mail. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.