Typography–"The Eye Is a Creature of Habit"
By David Ogilvy
Key Concepts:
- Good Typography helps people read your copy, bad typography prevents them from reading it.
- Capitals retard reading
- Capitals are read letter by letter
- People are accustomed to reading lower case.
- Letters superimposed over illustration are hard to read.
- No periods in headlines
- Drama belongs in what you say not the typeface.
- San serif is hard to read.
- Long copy's readership can be increased by:
- Subhead of two lines, between your headline and body copy.
- Starting body copy with a drop initial.
- Limit opening paragraph to eleven words max.
- After two or 3 inches of copy insert a crosshead
- Short lines / Windows increase readership
- Key paragraphs set in bold or italic
- Add arrowheads, arrows, bullets, asterisks, and marginal marks to help your reader into your paragraph.
- Number unrelated facts
- 11 point type is about right
- Add leading between paragraphs to increase readership.
- You can't sell what is unreadable.
This image follows many of the principles that Ogilvy discusses. The type is simple, and says what it means, it is lowercase, there are no periods, there are serifs, there is an illustration but the type does not lay on top of it.
This is another good example of the concepts of this article. The headline is lower case, in a pretty simple, readable font. Dates are also listed in an organized manner in lower case. There is use of a white shape so type isn't overlaying directly on an image.
Another example of the principles discussed. No cap headline, nice sense of space between the title and the sections of copy. Also the headline is against a black and white image, allowing it to stand out well. The only thing that holds it back is that the copy is sans-serif. However the title is a serif font.
I had an observation when researching for images, that it is hard to find headlines that follow these principles. Everything seems to be ALL CAPS.
