Four simple ways to make your text easier on the eyes

If you’ve ever ignored an instruction manual because its tiny font or cluttered layout made it too difficult to read, you’ll know exactly what we’re talking about.

Great, easy-to-read copy – whether it’s in a book, an ad or another medium – takes advantage of fonts and other formatting elements to help get the message across. When a text layout works flawlessly, you hardly notice it – but you certainly notice when it doesn’t work at all. (You can read one of our own examples and share yours on our blog.)

At Eye for Image, our specialty is communicating with words. We don’t claim to be graphic design experts – though we certainly understand the value a good graphic design brings to any text layout. But before you enlist a professional to tweak your fonts, colors and images – make sure your text formatting is working for, and not against, you. You might find that a touch of clever formatting is all your copy needs to become more readable.

 

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Here are four key formatting elements that can make or break the visual appeal of any copy:

1. Emphasis
There are lots of ways to emphasize the most important and powerful messages in a text.

• Enlarged fonts
• "pull-out quotes"
• text boxes
• marquees
• flashing text!
• ← → ↑ ↓ ↔   arrows

These elements can all draw the reader’s eyes where you want them to go first. So when you look at the design, make sure your attention is immediately pulled to the words with the most impact. At the same time, remember that having several flashing elements on a page can confuse the reader, so keep your emphasis to a minimum.

2. Font choice
Text has to be legible. The last thing you want is to force your reader to peer closely in order to read it. So:

• Make sure your font size is large enough. And remember, not everyone has eyesight as good as you.

• Avoid italics for large blocks of text. Everything is good in moderation – and italicized text is no exception. An entire paragraph of Italics is likely to give your reader a headache.

• Use serifs for body text (fonts with the little lines on them such as Times New Roman) to draw the eye along the line and make the letters easier to distinguish. (This only applies in print.)

• Use sans serifs (fonts without the little lines on them, such as Arial or Tahoma, the font we use for the text you’re reading) for headlines.

3. Font color
Black text on a white background is easiest to read. But for many people, this can look a little dull. If you decide to go for something more adventurous, stick to the light background and dark text combination. Only reverse this combination (white text on a black background) if your text will be read in the dark – for theatre programs, for example.

4. Pictures
Most marketing materials use images or photos. And the caption is a great place to do some selling. Give images a positive caption that emphasizes a product benefit. And put the caption under, next to or above the picture – anywhere but on it. Text over a multi-shaded image is tough to read.

What not to do
We’ve worked with some great designers who know how to bring out the best in our texts and really focus attention on the message. But we’ve also seen some copy design bloopers. Read about them on our blog.