How To Ruin Your Advert
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Imagine going to all the trouble of writing a great advert or sales letter and then unwittingly ruining it…
You’d be surprised how many business owners make this simple yet costly mistake… They write an advert or sales letter, taking great care to craft it for maximum impact and then absolutely destroy its chance of being read. How? They select the wrong typeface and with that one decision, make their advert or sales letter virtually unreadable.
So… if you want to avoid utterly destroying your advertising or sales letter read on to discover the Best Typeface For Your Advert Or Sales Letter.
To your success!
Best wishes,
Marie-Louise Cook
Editor – Daily Marketing Bulletin
How To Ruin Your Advert
Body copy – the main text of the advertisement or direct mail letter – should always be in serif type – never in sans-serif type, says copywriter Michael Masterson.
“Sans-serif type strung together is far too difficult to read,” he explains. “And the last thing you want to do is discourage your prospect from reading your advertisement or letter!” The two most popular typefaces in direct mail body copy are Courier New typeface and Times New Roman typeface.
Employ graphic enhancements such as underlining, bold text, and uppercase lettering, wherever it’s appropriate, advises direct marketing expert Ted Nichols. “Dramatising specific words and phrases causes readers to give these words special attention and importance.
“Make liberal use of options like super-headings and sub-headings to accentuate your main headline.
“Take advantage of large type sizes, bold type, text boxes, and other choices that fit your message. Remember however, to use these tools with a reasonable degree of restraint.
“Setting a frame off to the side can help draw the eye as it appears out of the ordinary. I’ve created sales letters for clients where only the offer was highlighted within the frame itself. The rest of the headline remained outside the box, but as the largest section of type. The strong offer fit it well and deserved attention all by itself.”
Printing
When printing, choose only light-coloured, or white paper stock, with black or another dark ink. Talking of printing, there is a fine line between design enhancements that attract the eye, but make the copy hard to read. One very common example is reverse type (white text on a solid colour background). Your readers will definitely ‘see’ and react to the colour, but they won’t read the words. Nichols says he’s conducted tests with reverse type that shows reverse type lowers response rates.
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I agree with some of the things Michael Masterson recommends and disagree with others.
He’s right about reverse type but wrong about sans serif fonts. The easiest fonts to read resemble your own handwriting, unsurprisingly. Which means Comic sans and, at a pinch arial like you use on this website (there are others).
You might find Type and Layout by C Wheildon (Strathmore Press) useful.
There are also best places to put pictures on a page.
From my own MA(Ed) dissertation you should avoid trying to get your message across using only Labelled and Annotated Illustrations.
All good advice and it is also worth remembering to stick to one type face and don’t use a wide variety of colours. Both these errors make your communication look messy and really amateur
This particular bulletin really stirred up a hornet’s nest!
We had people calling into the office pointing out that the email itself was in a sans serif font and surely a contradiction to what the article was about.
Some were outraged over this apparent contradiction!
It brings up the interesting point of readability on a computer screen rather than on a piece of paper.
Our article was about ensuring the readability of your message when communicating in print – and as has been pointed out, a different set of rules apply to on screen readability.
The bottom line is – some fonts are easier to read than others and your target market can also influence the size of the font (for example, an older target market might appreciate a larger font etc).
At the end of the day, if your message can’t be read easily, then your chances of selling to that person diminish.
Thank you, thank you at last some one who as picked up on what I’ve been saying for years.
I receive e-mails all the time that I can’t read, the reason is I have dyslexic.
They come in too small typeface, fonts I can’t see, coloured text on solid background that don’t work for me, and the post is the same a lot of letters come in times front, if its under 20 I can’t read it,
I find verdana, bitstream, vera and sans best for me, I don’t have to change anything to read it but lots of others come in and the first thing I have to do is change the font and or size that’s if I can if not I have to wait and ask my husband to read it out for me.
Barclay’s bank is a good one, they just change their site now they print on screen in pale blue I can’t see it, so to bank on line I need someone to read the boxes for me, not a good thing, I’ve reported it.