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…

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