5 ms·

The Design of Forms in Government Departments (1962)

35 points by BerislavLopac 6y ago

open-source-ux 6y ago
Fascinating. It has a formal tone of writing as you'd expect, but it's not too wordy. Wordiness is what you expect of printed goverment publications (even today). The principles are still sound. Naturally, it covers printed forms only. For comparison, here are the current GOV.UK recommendations for designing forms: https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/design/form-structure https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/design/form-structure
- petepete 6y ago
  Also worth linking to the design system here. The amount of care and attention that goes into the usability of every form element is mindblowing. https://design-system.service.gov.uk/ https://design-system.service.gov.uk/
- abraae 6y ago
  Not too wordy is a matter of opinion. While surprisingly well written and readable for a govt pub, I still find it's a little "wall of text" like. At a meta level, here's what the document itself advises about wordiness: > Avoid unnecessary words, e.g. the phrase ‘In every case in which particulars are furnished’ (eight words), can be reduced to ‘When particulars are given’ (four words): a phrase such as ‘It should be noted that the obligation to furnish particulars’ (ten words), is no less clear when reduced to ‘The obligation to give particulars’ (five words). In a modern, plain english style, these might be further chopped down to 'When provided' (two words) and 'Mandatory when' (two words).
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
NomDePlum 6y ago
Have to say I really like the layout and styling of the site. Super easy to read and navigate. Interesting content too.
jeffgreco 6y ago
Love these illustrations of a form being revised: https://design-of-forms.online/the-form-in-print/alphabets/ https://design-of-forms.online/the-form-in-print/alphabets/ And a nice selection of typefaces! Times Roman, Gill Sans, even Rockwell for some headings. edit: these are great too https://design-of-forms.online/the-form-in-print/rules/ https://design-of-forms.online/the-form-in-print/rules/
- systemvoltage 6y ago
  The art of making illustrations is almost lost now it seems(scroll towards the bottom): https://design-of-forms.online/evolving-a-design/make-up-of-documents-and-forms/ https://design-of-forms.online/evolving-a-design/make-up-of-... Contemporary illustrators are Adobe professionals who Dribbble their way through the design world, churning out Corporate Memphis: https://www.are.na/claire-l-evans/corporate-memphis https://www.are.na/claire-l-evans/corporate-memphis
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
mhdhn 6y ago
I don't think I've ever seen 'alphabet' used as it is here: https://design-of-forms.online/the-form-in-print/alphabets/ https://design-of-forms.online/the-form-in-print/alphabets/ What does it mean? A cross between today's "letter case" and "font style". Wonder if that's old timey English and/or old timey graphic design. Also love the old-timey copy-editor directions on the same page.
korginator 6y ago
Absolutely lovely design and presentation. I truly appreciate the thoughtfulness and care that has gone into building this. The layout and clarity are top notch. Theming is just perfect. Switching from a light to dark theme takes care of the images too. Far too many pages switch the theme of the page but leave images as is, resulting in bright images in an otherwise dark themed page. The UK Gov themselves take great pride in their attention to accessibility, so kudos to them as well.
SebastianKra 6y ago
This page is a great example of why we need to finally stop using PDFs for publishing. It reflows perfectly on any screen. Searching and copying work well. I can control the font size or use a reader mode. It's already possible to publish similar documents as a single HTML file with embedded images. Maybe add a few more CSS rules for printing and a checksum system against manipulation. But instead, we're dealing with Latex - a language that overcomplicates the most basic features such as fonts, tables and special characters.
- bradrn 6y ago
  > But instead, we're dealing with Latex - a language that overcomplicates the most basic features such as fonts, tables and special characters. I can’t really argue with the rest of your post, but in my experience this is incorrect. Fonts and special characters are both trivial if you use XeTeX, and tables, though slightly clumsy, are still pretty easy. As an example, see the documentation I wrote for https://github.com/bradrn/Conkey https://github.com/bradrn/Conkey, which makes extremely heavy use of all three features. (As documentation for a keyboard layout, it uses characters from pretty much every corner of Unicode, and accompanying tables of many shapes and sizes to show how to type these characters; I needed to use Gentium in order to render all these characters, with Times New Roman as a fallback. I found that LaTeX could ably handle all of these complecations.)
  - SebastianKra 6y ago
    Admittedly, I should have picked better examples. XeTeX helps, but in my last team, I was stuck with Latex and came across this comical discussion on how to typeset a tilde in the default font [1]. For tables there are many many different implementations that all work in only some use cases [2]. A few years ago, I got stuck trying to find a multicolumn table that can reflow onto new pages [3]. Add to that the clunky syntax, the cryptic error messages and the poor defaults, and you can probably see why I dislike it so much. [1]: https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/312/correctly-typesetting-a-tilde https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/312/correctly-typese... [2]: https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/12672/which-tabular-packages-do-which-tasks-and-which-packages-conflict#12673 https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/12672/which-tabular-... [3]: https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/125116/longtabu-with-multicols#125214 https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/125116/longtabu-with...

35 points by BerislavLopac 6y ago

Fascinating. It has a formal tone of writing as you'd expect, but it's not too wordy. Wordiness is what you expect of printed goverment publications (even today). The principles are still sound. Naturally, it covers printed forms only. For comparison, here are the current GOV.UK recommendations for designing forms: https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/design/form-structure https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/design/form-structure

petepete 6y ago
Also worth linking to the design system here. The amount of care and attention that goes into the usability of every form element is mindblowing. https://design-system.service.gov.uk/ https://design-system.service.gov.uk/
abraae 6y ago
Not too wordy is a matter of opinion. While surprisingly well written and readable for a govt pub, I still find it's a little "wall of text" like. At a meta level, here's what the document itself advises about wordiness: > Avoid unnecessary words, e.g. the phrase ‘In every case in which particulars are furnished’ (eight words), can be reduced to ‘When particulars are given’ (four words): a phrase such as ‘It should be noted that the obligation to furnish particulars’ (ten words), is no less clear when reduced to ‘The obligation to give particulars’ (five words). In a modern, plain english style, these might be further chopped down to 'When provided' (two words) and 'Mandatory when' (two words).
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

NomDePlum 6y ago

Have to say I really like the layout and styling of the site. Super easy to read and navigate. Interesting content too.

jeffgreco 6y ago

Love these illustrations of a form being revised: https://design-of-forms.online/the-form-in-print/alphabets/ https://design-of-forms.online/the-form-in-print/alphabets/ And a nice selection of typefaces! Times Roman, Gill Sans, even Rockwell for some headings. edit: these are great too https://design-of-forms.online/the-form-in-print/rules/ https://design-of-forms.online/the-form-in-print/rules/

systemvoltage 6y ago
The art of making illustrations is almost lost now it seems(scroll towards the bottom): https://design-of-forms.online/evolving-a-design/make-up-of-documents-and-forms/ https://design-of-forms.online/evolving-a-design/make-up-of-... Contemporary illustrators are Adobe professionals who Dribbble their way through the design world, churning out Corporate Memphis: https://www.are.na/claire-l-evans/corporate-memphis https://www.are.na/claire-l-evans/corporate-memphis

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

mhdhn 6y ago

I don't think I've ever seen 'alphabet' used as it is here: https://design-of-forms.online/the-form-in-print/alphabets/ https://design-of-forms.online/the-form-in-print/alphabets/ What does it mean? A cross between today's "letter case" and "font style". Wonder if that's old timey English and/or old timey graphic design. Also love the old-timey copy-editor directions on the same page.

korginator 6y ago

Absolutely lovely design and presentation. I truly appreciate the thoughtfulness and care that has gone into building this. The layout and clarity are top notch. Theming is just perfect. Switching from a light to dark theme takes care of the images too. Far too many pages switch the theme of the page but leave images as is, resulting in bright images in an otherwise dark themed page. The UK Gov themselves take great pride in their attention to accessibility, so kudos to them as well.

SebastianKra 6y ago

This page is a great example of why we need to finally stop using PDFs for publishing. It reflows perfectly on any screen. Searching and copying work well. I can control the font size or use a reader mode. It's already possible to publish similar documents as a single HTML file with embedded images. Maybe add a few more CSS rules for printing and a checksum system against manipulation. But instead, we're dealing with Latex - a language that overcomplicates the most basic features such as fonts, tables and special characters.

bradrn 6y ago
> But instead, we're dealing with Latex - a language that overcomplicates the most basic features such as fonts, tables and special characters. I can’t really argue with the rest of your post, but in my experience this is incorrect. Fonts and special characters are both trivial if you use XeTeX, and tables, though slightly clumsy, are still pretty easy. As an example, see the documentation I wrote for https://github.com/bradrn/Conkey https://github.com/bradrn/Conkey, which makes extremely heavy use of all three features. (As documentation for a keyboard layout, it uses characters from pretty much every corner of Unicode, and accompanying tables of many shapes and sizes to show how to type these characters; I needed to use Gentium in order to render all these characters, with Times New Roman as a fallback. I found that LaTeX could ably handle all of these complecations.)
- SebastianKra 6y ago
  Admittedly, I should have picked better examples. XeTeX helps, but in my last team, I was stuck with Latex and came across this comical discussion on how to typeset a tilde in the default font [1]. For tables there are many many different implementations that all work in only some use cases [2]. A few years ago, I got stuck trying to find a multicolumn table that can reflow onto new pages [3]. Add to that the clunky syntax, the cryptic error messages and the poor defaults, and you can probably see why I dislike it so much. [1]: https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/312/correctly-typesetting-a-tilde https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/312/correctly-typese... [2]: https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/12672/which-tabular-packages-do-which-tasks-and-which-packages-conflict#12673 https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/12672/which-tabular-... [3]: https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/125116/longtabu-with-multicols#125214 https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/125116/longtabu-with...