Type & Layout: Are You Communicating or Just Making Pretty Shapes (Paperback)

~ (Author) "Why should one magazine advertisement generate thousands of inquiries while a similar ad in the same issue for a competing product fails?..." (more)
Key Phrases: serif body type, reading gravity, lower case headlines, Colin Wheildon, Good Fair Poor, David Ogilvy (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

The proliferation of desktop publishing has reawakened interest in the presentational aspects of printed communication; that is, in what writing looks like. When picking a fonts package, the image-conscious self-expresser would do well to consult Wheildon on the ins and outs of typography and graphic design; indeed, for those in advertising, his book will serve as a layout primer. In measured, detailed language, and drawing on nine years of research, Wheildon discusses page layout, typefaces, reader behavior, and more. Further, given subject matter that lends itself to insightful illustration, he accompanies the text with graphics that enhance and underscore his points at every turn. His writing seems a bit technical, even dry, at first, but detailed and crisp exposition combine with apt illustration to impart as much depth about the technical aspects of presenting printed communication as many readers may want. Mike Tribby --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

Type & Layout should be the definitive reference for anyone involved in design, publishing and print advertising. -- Philip Hamson, Advertising IT Liaison, Newcastle Newspapers Ltd, Aust.

Using principles of this sort, I make millions for my clients every year -- Carol Worthington-Levy, Direct Marketing Consultant and Partner, Creative Services, LENSER, San Rafael CA

You need this book if you use the printed word to sell, promote, or persuade! -- Mal Warwick, fundraiser and author, publisher of Type & Layout first edition

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Product Details

• Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: The Worsley Press; 2nd edition (March 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1875750223
• ISBN-13: 978-1875750221
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 7.4 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #89,676 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing new edition, November 8, 2005

By	Victoria Jones (Madison, WI USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.

22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Book For People Who Work In Print Communication, April 13, 2005

By	Peter Hupalo (MN United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

"Type & Layout" by Colin Wheildon is an excellent introduction to typography and the readability of advertisements, brochures, and other written communication pieces. This book is valuable to anyone who creates advertising, direct mail, or graphic arts. It's also useful to authors and publishers who seek to enhance the readability of their material. And, it's extremely valuable to purchasers of advertising who wish to be sure their message to their readership is being maximized.

Based upon reader surveys, "Type & Layout" shows us how easy or how difficult it is to read various type. We learn the percentage of readers who cease reading due to poor design or poor type selection.

For example, when using a Roman font, switching to an italic type for emphasis has roughly the same readability as the base font. However, switching to a bold type tends to lose half the readership. We learn that long passages in bold are a definite no-no.

Surveying thousands of readers, it was found that 90 percent of the readers were happiest with 12-point type, set at 13-point leading (12/13). But, at 12/12, only 72 percent of the readers were as satisfied. More leading also created a drop in readability. When averaged over a large number of prospective readers, these drops in readability greatly affect the number of individuals who receive the full message. This has significant marketing implications.

Wheildon writes: "Let's set the scene by looking at figure 10a (p. 34), a very simple design. We'll assume it occupies a page in a mass circulation newspaper or magazine, and that its eye-catching illustration and thought-provoking headline have attracted the attention of a million readers. We've set the body matter in an elegant serif face, say, Garamond (see figure 6, p. 25). ...The conditions for comprehension are excellent. The chances are good that the message will be comprehended thoroughly by about 670,000 of those readers, two-thirds of them. ... Now let's suppose that we reset the type in a sans serif face, say Helvetica, reputedly one of the more legible sans serif faces. Figure 6 (opposite) shows how this looks. The chances now are that the message will be comprehended thoroughly by only 120,000 of our readers!"

"Type & Layout" teaches us the way the eye flows naturally across a page and downward and how interrupting this flow of eye gravity turns off readers. Surprisingly, we learn that justified type is actually more readable than ragged-right type. Ragged-left text has the worst readability of all. While 67% of the participants experienced good readability with justified text, a meager 10% found ragged-left text to have good readability.

We also learn how incorporating color in type or in the background affects readability. We learn how kerning and tracking affect readability.

After studying the lessons in Type & Layout, some of the professionally-created examples of poor readability design that are given in the book seem downright humorous, with the designs bending and twisting text and mixing colors like orange and yellow to make readability nearly impossible! It's argued that computers may give designers too much ability to do fancy things that distract from their ultimate message.

One great example shows how a scripted headline, tilted upward between a strong visual element and more readable text below, is almost never read in a hurry. Combining text which is barely readable with misuse of gravity, the headline is unintentionally buried better than the small print in a legal contract!

I highly recommend "Type & Layout" to everyone who works in advertising, publishing, or graphic design and who wants to maximize the impact of their materials.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Good for Advertising, But..., November 29, 1999

By	John Hastings (Pelham, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Type & Layout: How Typography and Design Can Get Your Message Across-Or Get in the Way (Paperback)

Wheildon is an advertising man who was tired of guessing how typography influenced the effectiveness of print advertising. He did some research to find out, and most of what he found is no surprise. Serif type is easier to comprehend than sans serif. Copy set in all caps is difficult to read. He provides convincing data to back up these assertions - a useful contribution. The overall effect of the book however, gives one pause. Two major complaints: 1.- His results were originally distributed as a research paper, and the paper has been mercilessly padded to fill this book. 2.- The layout and type of the book itself fight his main point - that typography should enhance, not hurt, good communication. For instance, throughout the book paragraphs have both indents and extra spacing. Visually, this makes each paragraph seems like its own separate thought, unconnected to the previous idea. Add to that the varying blank space at the end of the page - is this the end of a chapter? - and you have a book whose layout inhibits communication. Not a good quality for a book entitled "Type & Layout." The examples of advertising in the book show how well his principles apply to that medium, but the layout of the book itself makes one wonder. After reading the whole book (which took about 90 minutes), I felt ripped off.