Readability / clarity in new combined magazine

[Howard Lewis]

On Howard Lewis Said:

… 

We can do without fancy / unusual fonts, just for the sake of it.

If the text is not easily visible and read, there is no point in using it.

…

Agree with everything Howard says, but I suspect cock-up as much as conspiracy!

Changing font in days of yore was a major performance, so only done deliberately.   All change!  Today’s computers support many fonts at the click of a button, making it easy to use a special effect font and forget to turn it off.   Another modern booby trap is software sent a document calling for a font that’s not available locally can automatically substitute another, and maybe the operator doesn’t notice!

Printing has changed enormously in my lifetime.  Thousands of jobs gone!  In the 1960’s Model Engineer had an enormous editorial team feeding a conventional manual typesetting print process.  Grossly overstaffed by modern standards!  However,  as everyone was paid pennies, there were plenty of staff available to proof-read everything through each of many production stages.   Not so now: far fewer people involved, and fewer stages.  Unfortunately, the high-level of automation means small mistakes slip through.  And these are very likely when major changes are made, as when merging two magazines.

What I’m seeing in ME&W is typical change.  At first, many glitches, most of which are quickly fixed , thereafter a gradual improvement as lesser bugs are wrinkled out.  So loads of  font, format and colour problems in the first ME&W, far fewer in the latest.

My favourite reading fonts are all early.  Bookman, Baskerville and Bodoni!

Oddly, I find serifs improve and reduce readability depending on the book.   Possibly due to the nature of the paper – some smudge the ink slightly.

Dave

 

[Trevor GaleParticipant @trevorgale]

I have just received the July issue of ME & W and happened to first peruse the Readers Letters – and felt as if I was almost smacked in my face… on just the first page there are 3 different fonts and sizes and the second page is not much better either. Still, I read onwards, and came to an article (my apologies, I forget which one and it is upstairs so not to hand and I’m lazy!) with its first page printed as bright orange background with white text – which gives awful lack of contrast. What immediately comes to mind is that perhaps the layout was only looked at on a computer screen which gives a totally different (additive) image than the same content when printed on paper (subtractive). The following pages of that article are printed more conventionally as black text on white background. As an example, I would suggest printing out the attached image on a colour printer and compare the two pairs of lines. The magazine page would have been far, far better if the text had been placed as black on that background…

[Russell EberhardtParticipant @russelleberhardt48058]

I have only just received the July issue, having it delivered to me in France, but I must say that I agree with Trevor.  The first page of the article “Cheap Nasty Plastics” is very difficult to read as a result of poor choice of colours.  However, having struggled through that first page I found the article to be very informative and helpful.

I do, however, have another complaint and that is the poor quality of the printed pictures illustrating some of the points made in the text.  The printed quality is so poor that it was impossible to see what the author was intending to show.  Going to the online Pocketmags version it can be seen that the pictures were much better, with the exception of photo 4 which has some fuzzy shadowing.

I was pleased to see that the author used to be a lecturer at my old university.

Russell

[Howard LewisParticipant @howardlewis46836]

When contributing an article to MEW, I always submitted a file of about 1MB, taken with a digital camera (Pansonic FZ50 for those interested, usually at the 35 mm equivalent focal length)

Resized from about 4 Mb.

I was satsified with the reproduction in the magazine, (VERY occasionally captions would be interchanged!)

Despite their apparent great pixel capacity, I suspect that a fixed phone lens cannot always equal the quality of a good camera and lens combination.

But text font and colour must always be chosen to enhance visibility, rather than to satisfy someone’s whim to “Advance the bounds of technology, or novelty”

Howard

[alecsParticipant @alecs]

<p style=”text-align: left;”>Reverse text (ie coloured background) does not look the same on screen or even on a laser printed page from the editorial office printer as it does in a printed magazine, which one old printer described to me as “like throwing handfuls of ink at a sponge” due to the porosity of the paper spreading the ink.</p>
    And the science shows reverse print is harder to read, even on a clear image or laser print.

 

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

I’m waiting to see how an article I sent neil come sou. Usually I take photos with the phone and send them in without any alteration so they can be between 3 and 5Mb, Same as I use here. However this article has a lot of screen captures of less than half a Mb and is very image heavy.

I’m not keen on the paper that has been used over the last 6 months or so, it is very thin, and you can find images affected by what is on the other side of the paper and not what you would call a glossy mag.

However I do sometimes get to see what is sent in both in the way of photos and drawings, if you think what is in the mag is poor you should see what Neil has to sometimes reject!

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

Don’t forget the advertised resolution of your camera is probably 2 or 3 times the actual number of pixels and they are interpolating extra points in between. Even worse sometimes the number of pixels the engineer told the ad-man is the total of the 3 colour receptors.
I was looking at infrared cameras recently where the problem was rife but they (inadvertently?) gave all the technical information to see the fraud.

[Howard LewisParticipant @howardlewis46836]

And, even with a high quality camera , lens, or phone, camera shake will blur the image, unless flash or a tripod are used.

And then, as said, porous paper will soften the image, and subtley change the colour.

We can’t win can we?

Howard.

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

Can’t see a problem myself though my issue doesn’t seem to have the article “cheap nasty plastics” and I can’t find the index or the search button on the homepage. Multiple fonts on Postbag page are just the titles and headings which I hardly need to read. Nor was the very few lines in large white on yellow text a problem for my colour perception – maybe just lucky. Incidentally the white on blue of the announcement about the index (page 51) was what the BBC computer chose as the most readable combination back in 1982.
The pictures in Jason’s article seem clear but understandably the pictures elsewhere of a black loco showed why it is better to paint your loco green or blue or….. 🙂 I wonder if AI could improve these photos?

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

Most cameras and phones these days have some sort of image stabilisation, so you would have to be very shaky to get problems. My shots are all hand held.

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