¶ Among the organisations we at Clearleft have been privileged to consult for, are governmental bodies including local councils. Working for these clients can often be extremely rewarding, but getting the job in the first place frequently involves a tedious, time consuming, tendering process with clauses like this (my emphasis):
[Companies are expected to] supply a detailed overall report of the findings from each of the phases in Arial 12pt font in draft form for approval.
Soul destroying.
Comments
1
I once freelanced for a client who demanded that I must submit all my mockups in MS Word or PowerPoint format.
2
Sounds fair enough. They’re probably sick of reading Times at 10pt, Word’s installed default, which is too small for many people to read comfortably; or Comic Sans…
3
Just use Helvetica at 11pt and see if they notice. :)
4
Even more soul destroying is the distinct possibility that Arial is now the most ubiquitous typeface in the world. I’ve been dwelling on that a lot lately: just how much I am completely surrounded by it everywhere I go.
5
Microsoft’s new C typeface collection that’s shipping with the Office 2007 Beta replaces the default body text with a sans-serif typeface called Calibri and headings with a serif called Cambria.
I have written a couple of lesser format reports using this combination and I am loving it. It’s such an incredible improvement over what we’ve been seeing for the past ten or so years on Windows.
Goodbye Times New Roman and Arial.
6
I think the demand for 12pt Arial is something to do with the advice councils have received from bodies like RNIB, which have recommended 12pt as a minimum size and Arial as a (ubiquitous) legible font. Make of that what you will…
I dare you to try a different sans-serif font and see if anyone notices.
7
I’ll see your Arial 12pt and raise you an Arial Narrow 10pt – that’s the sort of thing I have to use at The Company.
Makes my eyes bleed.
8
The aspect that destroys my soul is that someone (or probably several someones) was paid, using my tax pounds, to decide that this was an important enough issue to describe in a clause.
And then you guys get stuck with reading it, and implementing it.
Waste of everyone’s time, money and effort.
9
I have to agree that everytime we recieve directions that doesn’t allow us to be creative is a little soul destroying.
However, for a technical report, I think some standards may be good, even at cost of creative work.
The same way we all want designers and browsers to follow W3C specifications seems sensible to have specifications for reports.
Maybe, Arial 12pt is not the best choice, though… lol
10
It’s not as if it would be stifling our creativity – in this case we would be writing a report for the client. – and I would have been fine with being asked to follow a house style (assuming in was readable).
It’s more that the client doesn’t seem to trust its supplier to deliver the report in a legible format without specifying size and typeface – and a poor one at that. But most of all, it’s as pauldwaite said: tax pounds have gone towards paying someone to include, and probably argue over, this clause.
11
Could have been Comic Sans…
12
As for me 14 pt is the best for reading. 10 is too small for reading
13
“In cold blood – with a toothpick.”
(Madvillan)
14
Unfortunately I think that is a necessary rule at times. I’ve been given reports that were prepared with a script style font. Yes it looked pretty but when you need to read 50 pages of this pretty script you start thinking rules like this are good ideas :)
15
This reminds me of this article:
http://www.scottmanning.com/archives/000455.php
which I am sure, by now, you have all read again and again….
16
“I’ve been given reports that were prepared with a script style font. Yes it looked pretty but when you need to read 50 pages of this pretty script you start thinking rules like this are good ideas :)”
There’s a simple solution to that: don’t give those idiots the job. If they can’t figure out you need readable fonts for business communications, they’re not the sort of people you want to deal with.
17
Well put. My point exactly.
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