Taking the ‘elephant’ out of design

Published 19 February 2008

Also in this issue: guest contribution | alice's actions

What colour is an elephant?

Usually grey, and a page lacking in white space is usually termed ‘grey’. This occurs when your design is too cluttered, with all the content crammed into every available space. Check this out with a simple tip: hold the page in front of you and screw up your eyes. This will cause your design to ‘merge’ together into a grey (or coloured) haze. If you can still make out the paragraphs, lines and pictures, you’re OK. If not, then everything is too close together and you need more white space.

White space helps to eliminate ‘grey pages’. And you also need to be aware of positioning of text and graphics and to understand how the eye ‘works’ the page. It isn’t just a situation of starting at the top left hand corner and ending up at the bottom right. The eye scans, jumps around, takes in the whole page and assesses how easy it is to read before continuing. Certain elements need to ‘ping’ out and catch your attention while white space allows the design to ‘breathe’, and if the end result is not pleasing, the publication will end up in the bin.

White space affects the area outside the text as well as within it, by considering the width of the margins and column gutters (space between columns). Never shy away from wide margins: top and bottom as well as the sides. Don’t assume everything has to go up to the edge of the page – this contributes to ‘greyness’ as well as illegibility. The extra white space will allow the eye to focus inwards, and a ragged left alignment aids the flow of reading by eliminating poor word-spacing, especially within narrow columns.

Then there are the finicky areas of white space. Consider whether the space above and below your headlines is sufficient to differentiate it from the rest of the article, or allow it to associate itself with the paragraph below. How much ‘stand off’ space is there around your pictures? Don’t allow insufficient ‘text wrapping’ to juxtapose the words right up to the edge of your photographs. And use your backgrounds sparingly, as eliminating white space only contributes towards clutter.

Click here to read the first part about ‘white space’.

Guest Contribution

Imagine a world without copywriters...

Part 2: How words help your business to flourish

You’re the owner of Fiona’s Flowers, a well-established medium-sized flower shop who has been in business for, say, ten years. You have a core group of customers ranging from funeral directors to the nice old man who always buys roses for his wife on Saturday. You have regular adverts in the local paper, a website and links with a local garden centre. But now you want to do even better, go that extra mile.

Being an expert in flowers and not marketing, you’re not entirely sure how to go about getting more customers and income. You think that your advertising is all right but could be better.

Then in walks a customer who happens to mention that they’re a copywriter. A light-bulb flashes in your brain.

“A copywriter you say? What writing do you do then?”

“Marketing material. Adverts, websites, etc,” they reply. “Would you like some help?”

“Well if you don’t mind...”

You invite the copywriter around for a chat and explain that you want to expand your horizons. You show them your existing literature while the copywriter is busy making notes. They agree that although what you’ve got is good, it could be even better.

“It’s all in way the words are used. We need to give it a fresh approach by pruning some edges while still retaining your existing reputation.”

After a fashion of tweaking and playing around, the re-writing is complete. You’re a bit doubtful that the changing of a few words will do the trick. However, you publish your website, print the adverts and sit back and wait. But not for long...

Fiona’s Flowers were lucky that the right person walked through the door. If you don’t know where to look for help, then give www.sjcopy.co.uk a try. If you like what you’ve read and want to find out how a copywriter can help you, then find out more about copywriters from Fiona Seymour-Jesse via www.sjcopy.co.uk, or you can email fiona@sjcopy.co.uk or phone 01244 301065.

Alice's Actions #14

Do you have just one kind of customer?

Take a look at washing powder. There are lots of different brands in the shops, all containing identical white washing powder. How do you know if any are different from the rest? Is it because what is said on the packet? This brand helps troubled skin, this brand protects your colours, this brand works really well on stains, etc. Are there really any differences, in spite of the specific criteria stated on the boxes? Sure, some may contain additional elements to justify their claims, but underneath it all it’s still just washing powder.

Now look at your service or product. How can you market it for specific groups of people? Could it be adapted to meet the criteria of different target markets? Packaging is the key if you want to make it more attractive to a wider audience, but at the end of the day it’s still the same product or service, just rewritten with a separate process and marketed differently.

Now for the action: differentiate the target markets you wish to focus on, restructure your product or service to suit, and go ask Alice how to publicise it!

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