Download Type & Layout: Are You Communicating or Just Making Pretty Shapes (Kickstarting Business Series) fb2

If you're in marketing or advertisement, and work with graphic artists, this is very helpful. The conclusions are based on research, not subjective opinions. And the orientation is toward effectiveness rather than beauty. (A pretty layout isn't necessarily helpful in getting reader response!)

This will help keep your printed pieces on-mission.

I waited weeks for the 2005 updated version of this classic. I'm so glad I did!

As a writer, I once paid little attention to layout and type. Those days are over, because now I grasp concepts that will make my words so much more powerful -- or kill my words altogether:

How layout influences what is retained by the reader -- much more than I ever imagined.

How type can enhance or destroy readability.

The effects of centering -- when it works, when it doesn't, and why.

Why line spacing and margins matter.

This book resides on my desk - right beside my keyboard, so I can grab it quickly for reference.

When the next version comes out, I'll again wait weeks for it (if I have to). The information it contains is essential to writers for ensuring that what you write gets read.

Phyllis Staff, Ph.D.
author, "How to Find Great Senior Housing"
and
"128 Ways to Prevent Alzheimer's and Other Dementias"

Just a great read for non-designers and designers alike, it gives us a common language to discuss creative. When I get tired of hearing meaningless comments like "clean look," "hard to read," "just doesn't pop" or "too complicated" I usually buy that person a copy of this book, and wait for more effective communication to start. Sick of designers using reversed out type and thinking its creative? Get this book and start doing things that actually sell, rather than just look good.

This has to be one of the most powerful and valuable marketing books I have ever read. It provides you with re into what does and what does not work when creating advertising and marketing communication materials in regard to type and layout. No marketer should be without this book and every person in advertising should be forced to read it 10 times.

If you've ready Ogilvy On Advertising, you've been slightly introduced to some of the concepts in this book.

This however goes deep and covers so much more of the how and why. The book will revolutionize the way you look at the print/advertising world. You'll recognize all the garbage that's pumped every day, and you'll appreciate it when you come across a real layout gem.

finally a book that uses actual studies to determine the most easily read type and layout. great book.

I first heard Colin Wheildon report to our local Society of Business Communicators on his research into how best to present printed material to aid comprehension back in about 1985. It's no exaggeration to say those present were all blown away by what he'd found. Back then communicators were heavily into print: employee newspapers, magazines, brochures, booklets, and information packs proliferated. At that time there was little understanding about the difference between sending out stuff and communicating. And our society had recently changed its name from the Society of Industrial Editors. So print was BIG, really big.

By 1985 I'd chalked up 20 years in human resources had just moved into employee communication consulting. In HR I'd spent two decades struggling to make sense of newspaper loadings for recruitment display advertisements in some of the world's leading papers, adjudicated on countless designers' ideas about layout, fonts, white space, justification and so on. Then, when it was too late, here was a guy who'd done enough research to explain exactly what I should have doing for all those years.

Twenty years on, with the author in a beachside retirement home, an updated fifth edition is available globally. So has it stood the test of time? Yes, indeed it has - with the help of the author's thorough research for nine years, three editors and two publishers. One of the publishers was a direct marketer who proved the veracity of Wheildon's research findings. The current publisher, Geoffrey Heard, is a psychologist, editor and desktop publisher. He's added an interesting introduction, a chapter of 15 useful case studies and three appendices on various aspects of publishing (colour, eye movements, reading, typographical terms, and what's best for non-fluent readers).

Wheildon, the son of a master printer in Derby, England, was clever. At the outset he got excellent advice regarding his methodology. David Ogilvy (who said of this book "no guesswork only facts") helped him clarify what he was researching: comprehension rather than legibility. Leading academics in Sydney (Australia), Richmond (Virginia) and Reading (UK) guided his research. The survey sample was not large, a few hundred people, but it is adequate.

There are some limitations with a black and white, slightly smaller than quarto size book reproducing broadsheet pages, but this does not seem to matter too much. If you're like me, you'll soon be engrossed. This 175 page paperback is well-illustrated with 98 figures including full page advertisements and (good and poor) print examples from around the world. There are comprehensive chapters on such things as page layout, body and headline type, colour, design and how to put it all together. It all seems to be there: fonts, case, point size, serif or sans serif, justification, paper, captions, columns, spacing, reversed text and so on. (Read the index and first 16 pages at Amazon.com.)

If you're involved in writing anything for publication, print advertising or design layout you'll find this a gripping read. Ignore it at your peril.

I adored the first edition of Type & Layout. When I saw it was being reprinted, I promptly bought copies for every graphic designer I know and wrote a glowing review of it for Amazon.com. Then I received my copy of this new edition, and I have deleted my glowing review to submit this much-dimmer one. Geoffrey Heard, who provided the "additional material" for this edition, has taken a readable, well-laid-out book and transformed it into a mess of drawings of eyeballs, arrows pointing every which way, scattered call-outs, multiple exclamation points and question marks, and unnecessarily dramatic pronouncements ("A shocker!"). Every one of Wheildon's rules is broken in the layout of this new edition, and Heard should be permitted nowhere near Photoshop. I wonder who decided that Weildon's book, which had been through four printings and stood the test of time, needed improvement, or that Heard was the guy to improve it. The good news is that most of Wheildon's original work remains intact. So, buy this book, ignore all the extraneous, messy, goofiness that Heard infused into it -- you'll know it when you see it -- and give it all of your designer friends with the disclaimer that it used to be a really great book.