Feb
29
Hey, did anyone see the brilliant documentary film Helvetica? Yeah, neither did I. But it’s a great idea: An hour and a half about a font! One can only hope there are plenty of sequels (Helvetica II: The Helveticking) and copycats (Comic Sans Ascendant — The Dark Tide Cometh: A Film by Uwe Boll) so the market fills up with great options for those of us who like learning about kerning.*
Sometimes geeks can be such geeks, can’t they?
Font is, of course, a fairly important concern for those of us who write for a living. But it’s only one item on a list of things that we should always be checking up on. The little things on your blog have an aggregate effect on how your readers perceive you, so it’s important to revisit them every once in a while.
Font. Legibility, of course, is the most important consideration when choosing a font; you don’t want your readers missing out on your brilliant ripostes because they can’t penetrate whatever weird gothic calligraphy you’re using. But there’s more to the choice than that. This great post on Inspiration Bit documents the best-loved fonts in web design. And the comments on this Problogger post gave me a good crash course in typography.
A good font can help you stand out from the crowd, but the choices are rather limited, so be careful. The best font is often the most “invisible,” which is why ostentatious fonts like Comic Sans and Papyrus are so reviled.
Verbs. Verbs are very likely the most important and versatile parts of speech. There’s almost no effect you can accomplish with adjectives and adverbs that you can’t accomplish with verbs. Many resume coaches instruct their students to invest their writing efforts in the verbs they choose, and they’re right. The proper verb can mean everything, so go through some of your old posts and look at what you’ve used — does your verb choice match the tone you want your blog to achieve?
Bob Harris provides a great example of this by contrasting the buttons on Barack Obama’s and Hillary Clinton’s Web sites.
Privacy. OK, OK, so privacy isn’t such a small thing. But readers like to know these things matter to their content providers, and no intelligent person should assume any website has his or her best interests in mind, no matter how great the site is. Creating a privacy policy is a great idea even if you feel you don’t need one — it’ll let your readers know you’re an ethical blogger, and that you’re not selling their information to spammers. Of course, if you are selling their information to spammers, you are a very, very bad person.
Josh over at The Comics Curmudgeon recently created a thorough, user-friendly privacy policy written in plain English. Looks like a good template to me.
So there you have it. It’s the little things like these that can have profound effects on your relationship with your readers in the long run. What are some of the little things you find yourself fretting about?
*Forgive the snark. I’m told by at least one reliable source that this is a great film.
sometimes, it really is the little things that matter. I had one client that had his site in some weird font and when I changed the font the traffic increased 100% … people just couldn’t read the previous font he was using!
Darin
Did you know there is now an actual font called Matt Groenig ( hope I spelt that right) Anyway, the writing at the begining of the Simpsons is apparently his hand writing and it has been made into a complete font without him knowing. He was intereviewd on UK radio and he mentioned seeing it on a mouse mat in a foreign airport when going through immigration and the guy behind the desk recognised him from the font. How cool is that?
I test fonts for their effect on conversion on e-commerece sites and an uplift of 15-20% would be normal when font size, color and weight is changed. I think it is down to the readability, if the message is blocked because folks can’t absorb the message easily and quickly then they just bug out, they won’t struggle to read the message if they are also struggling to read the font
I think a lot of newer internet users would welcome assurances on privacy. The web can be a scary place, especially if you believe everything the media reports.
Having said that, the true sceptic wont believe the privacy policy either !
A quick apology, I submitted an entry under NITMIX but hit the back button because I hadn’t entered the bolg URL just the home page hoping to stop the post before it was processed, I didn’t catch it and got in a bit of a mess with the databases telling me I had already posted that article. Anyway, it looks like it went through but I thought it had been lost, I also posted something else shortly after to the same URL but i didn’t want to be accused of abusing the system, I just goofed and I apologise. I promise to buck up from here on in!
John
Hi, you have a great blog here.
I’m Shawn from http://themillionairesecrets.net/
Can I know which plug-in you are using for the social bookmark under your post? It looks great, and I would like to have one in my blog.
Best regards,
Shawn
Why not deisn your own at
http://www.social-bookmark-script.com/generator.htm
I thought this was pretty funky when I saw it.
I think privacy policy is also a sign of a quality and established site.
Hi John, thanks a lot for your recommendation. However, how to make the description besides the icon? Why I make the description besides the icon just like yours?
I hate reading webpages that are done in a crappy font. It’s the little things that really matter. Thanks for the laughs!
Sorry Shaun, you are asking the wrong guy, that’s a question for the Pureblogging team.
Huh? You are not from Pureblogging?
Nope, I’m here to learn from the big dogs too!
It could be Sociable
http://push.cx/sociable
I just read http://www.pureblogging.com/2007/04/02/top-30-wordpress-plugins/
And it could well be this one.
Iam going to give it a try anyway.
The key factors for me have to be font and the general layout. If a site doesn’t attract the eye, then in a matter of seconds you will be hitting the “back” button.
And what is content if it is so small, or in such an unusual size or layout that you don’t want to read it.
I am sure there are lots of studies on this but personally speaking, I like white font on black background.
Have to agree on the black backgrounds. Just take a leaf out of the book of the masters of style, Apple.
I don’t know about you. But I don’t gonna look to an documentary which is talking about a simple font (helvetica) the whole day. I don’t spend my time to such things.