4 ms·

Did anyone else think the left flyer looked cleaner (although still very muddled)?

kingofderpistan 12y ago
Yeah, I think none of the 2 look really good, but the left one looks cleaner. Like what is that weird circle thing doing on the right one? Putting clipart-style stuff on a flyer just because you need to fill some space doesn't feel like good design to me. Typography on the right one is a lot better tough.
- charliepark 12y ago
  The circle is an Ensō. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ens%C5%8D http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ens%C5%8D "In Zen Buddhism, an ensō (円相 , "circle"?) is a circle that is hand-drawn in one or two uninhibited brushstrokes to express a moment when the mind is free to let the body create." "The ensō symbolizes absolute enlightenment, strength, elegance, the universe, and mu (the void). It is characterised by a minimalism born of Japanese aesthetics." I can't speak to why it's there; possibly ties in to aikido?
  - Mikeb85 12y ago
    Yes the Zen circle thingy ties in to Aikido. Aikido is a (some say useless) martial art which emphasizes using an attacker's motion against him, and philosophically contains many philosophies which it shares with Zen Buddhism.
aikah 12y ago
Right flyer has a way better info hierarchy. Highlights are more readable from a distance : Aikido(subject) , beginner classes, regular classes, come visit(call to action). I don't know Aikido (I'm a Taido guy) so I don't know what the symbol on the bottom represents.
- skeuomorf 12y ago
  Also, the contact information on the left is not uniform (i.e. not similar) which creates unnecessary contrast and being emphasized (via size, all uppercase, boldness) it attracts unwanted attention (You don't want the contact information to grab the eye of your reader, because it takes some of his time and he might lose interest before even figuring out what your flyer is about, someone who has read your flyer and is interested in finding out more will seek out the contact information). Design is mainly about directing your reader's eyes throughout the flyer and attempting to retain his/her interest in the few seconds that you have his/her attention. Edit: Fixed typo.
  - paulwithap 12y ago
    When you have to use design principles to argue against the fact that many people think the "poorly designed" poster looks better, your principles have failed you, and maybe it's time to reconsider them.
    - tptacek 12y ago
      There is no reasonable way to argue that the "before" poster is better designed. Centered text, contact information typeset as loudly as the rest of the content, mixing uppercase and boldface for section headers, a URL bleeding into the margins. Neither design is good, but the "before" design communicates nothing clearly, while the "after" at least rewards a glance with the knowledge that: * there is a regular class schedule * you can come visit without an appointment That information is also in the "before" design, but you have to read carefully to find it. The most important thing to understand design is that a good design has clear goals. The critiques I'm reading of the "after" design seem to be based on the idea that all the information in the poster is equally relevant; they ignore the goals of the poster --- by necessity, since the "before" poster objectively doesn't have a goal, which it deliberately demonstrates by not having any hierarchy. If you don't care about the goals of the poster, you can just go with whether you like or dislike the thin black rules dividing it up, or whether you like big text or little text. But you're missing the point if you do that.
mattkenefick 12y ago
I came to the comments for this. I immediately liked the left way better, and then saw "If you said right one, then I did my job." I stopped reading after that because he obviously didn't do his job.
TillE 12y ago
Every piece of important information is larger and clearer on the left. Obviously there are flaws, but I think it could have been redesigned in a much more effective way.
rifung 12y ago
Exactly how I felt. I think this is because I focused on the left part of both pages instead of the right. The left side of the left flyer is much easier to read because the right flyer's text is too small and kind of ugly. I found the right side of the left flyer less clean because of the lack of distance between the borders and text, but I wouldn't have even bothered to look there had I not read that the right was supposed to look cleaner.
analog31 12y ago
I preferred the left one too, but I was looking at them side by side on a 11.5" notebook computer display, and the flyers were presumably designed for printing onto 8.5x11 paper. Another possibility is that we may be looking at two bad designs.
Mikeb85 12y ago
No. Definitely not. The left one made my head hurt, was hard to follow. The right one had much more clearly formatted, cleaner, and easier to follow.
tdkl 12y ago
IMHO it looked easier to read, since the font size was consistent in the information box on the right.
kstenerud 12y ago
He lost me in the first paragraph, because my first thought was that the one on the left looked a lot nicer. Both have the same information, but the one on the right makes much of the text smaller and less bold, harder to read. The left column on the left flyer also looks a lot more pleasing to the eye.
- forgotpasswd3x 12y ago
  I feel the one on the left was easier to skim through. The one on the right might be designed better, but I found it more difficult to skim.
tptacek 12y ago
Neither of the designs are good-looking (but that may be the point). The left design though is objectively inferior: * The text in the right column is centered, rather than aligned, and is thus ragged on both sides, making it harder to read and sloppy-looking. * The leading on "beginner class" yeesh. * The body copy in the left column is set at the same size as the header text in the right column. * The right column has indistinct headers with inadequate contrast. * The right column mixes header signifiers, in some cases using all uppercase, in others bold. * The body copy in the left column uses an oblique sans and the right column uses a similar sans, minimizing contract (notice how the "after" design uses a true italic) * The "sections" in the right column are set off with pointless thin rules, which is a design annoyance so basic that Tufte yells about it early in (iirc) The Visual Display Of Quantitative Information. * The right column has no hierarchy, so the contact information is set in exactly the same prominence as the rest of the information, so clumsily that the URL runs into the margin. I guess I could go on. This is pretty basic "Non-Designers Design" Robin Williams stuff. I don't see how you can criticize this blog post by suggesting that the "before" design is better. It's not. It's artificially bad: someone took a reasonable design and a list of everything you can do wrong in a page design and built a demo. I agree with another comment on this thread though about the clip-art; it muddled the point the article was trying to make. They should have worked the same clip art into the "before" picture if they wanted to do that.
- pdpi 12y ago
  > Neither of the designs are good-looking (but that may be the point). I do hope that was by choice, because, if so, this illustrates beautifully how "attractive design" and "good design" are not the same thing (bonus points to be had if the author had managed to make the left poster prettier than the right one). > I agree with another comment on this thread though about the clip-art; it muddled the point the article was trying to make. They should have worked the same clip art into the "before" picture if they wanted to do that. To me,the clip art said one thing, loud and clear: "After redoing the design, I'm left with a truckload of empty space". Considering how crowded the design on the left looks like, it's easy to think that you need _more_ room to fit everything in nicely, rather than less.
- reitanqild 12y ago

Yeah, I think none of the 2 look really good, but the left one looks cleaner. Like what is that weird circle thing doing on the right one? Putting clipart-style stuff on a flyer just because you need to fill some space doesn't feel like good design to me. Typography on the right one is a lot better tough.

charliepark 12y ago
The circle is an Ensō. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ens%C5%8D http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ens%C5%8D "In Zen Buddhism, an ensō (円相 , "circle"?) is a circle that is hand-drawn in one or two uninhibited brushstrokes to express a moment when the mind is free to let the body create." "The ensō symbolizes absolute enlightenment, strength, elegance, the universe, and mu (the void). It is characterised by a minimalism born of Japanese aesthetics." I can't speak to why it's there; possibly ties in to aikido?
- Mikeb85 12y ago
  Yes the Zen circle thingy ties in to Aikido. Aikido is a (some say useless) martial art which emphasizes using an attacker's motion against him, and philosophically contains many philosophies which it shares with Zen Buddhism.

aikah 12y ago

Right flyer has a way better info hierarchy. Highlights are more readable from a distance : Aikido(subject) , beginner classes, regular classes, come visit(call to action). I don't know Aikido (I'm a Taido guy) so I don't know what the symbol on the bottom represents.

skeuomorf 12y ago
Also, the contact information on the left is not uniform (i.e. not similar) which creates unnecessary contrast and being emphasized (via size, all uppercase, boldness) it attracts unwanted attention (You don't want the contact information to grab the eye of your reader, because it takes some of his time and he might lose interest before even figuring out what your flyer is about, someone who has read your flyer and is interested in finding out more will seek out the contact information). Design is mainly about directing your reader's eyes throughout the flyer and attempting to retain his/her interest in the few seconds that you have his/her attention. Edit: Fixed typo.
- paulwithap 12y ago
  When you have to use design principles to argue against the fact that many people think the "poorly designed" poster looks better, your principles have failed you, and maybe it's time to reconsider them.
  - tptacek 12y ago
    There is no reasonable way to argue that the "before" poster is better designed. Centered text, contact information typeset as loudly as the rest of the content, mixing uppercase and boldface for section headers, a URL bleeding into the margins. Neither design is good, but the "before" design communicates nothing clearly, while the "after" at least rewards a glance with the knowledge that: * there is a regular class schedule * you can come visit without an appointment That information is also in the "before" design, but you have to read carefully to find it. The most important thing to understand design is that a good design has clear goals. The critiques I'm reading of the "after" design seem to be based on the idea that all the information in the poster is equally relevant; they ignore the goals of the poster --- by necessity, since the "before" poster objectively doesn't have a goal, which it deliberately demonstrates by not having any hierarchy. If you don't care about the goals of the poster, you can just go with whether you like or dislike the thin black rules dividing it up, or whether you like big text or little text. But you're missing the point if you do that.

mattkenefick 12y ago

I came to the comments for this. I immediately liked the left way better, and then saw "If you said right one, then I did my job." I stopped reading after that because he obviously didn't do his job.

TillE 12y ago

Every piece of important information is larger and clearer on the left. Obviously there are flaws, but I think it could have been redesigned in a much more effective way.

rifung 12y ago

Exactly how I felt. I think this is because I focused on the left part of both pages instead of the right. The left side of the left flyer is much easier to read because the right flyer's text is too small and kind of ugly. I found the right side of the left flyer less clean because of the lack of distance between the borders and text, but I wouldn't have even bothered to look there had I not read that the right was supposed to look cleaner.

analog31 12y ago

I preferred the left one too, but I was looking at them side by side on a 11.5" notebook computer display, and the flyers were presumably designed for printing onto 8.5x11 paper. Another possibility is that we may be looking at two bad designs.

Mikeb85 12y ago

No. Definitely not. The left one made my head hurt, was hard to follow. The right one had much more clearly formatted, cleaner, and easier to follow.

tdkl 12y ago

IMHO it looked easier to read, since the font size was consistent in the information box on the right.

kstenerud 12y ago

He lost me in the first paragraph, because my first thought was that the one on the left looked a lot nicer. Both have the same information, but the one on the right makes much of the text smaller and less bold, harder to read. The left column on the left flyer also looks a lot more pleasing to the eye.

forgotpasswd3x 12y ago
I feel the one on the left was easier to skim through. The one on the right might be designed better, but I found it more difficult to skim.

tptacek 12y ago

Neither of the designs are good-looking (but that may be the point). The left design though is objectively inferior: * The text in the right column is centered, rather than aligned, and is thus ragged on both sides, making it harder to read and sloppy-looking. * The leading on "beginner class" yeesh. * The body copy in the left column is set at the same size as the header text in the right column. * The right column has indistinct headers with inadequate contrast. * The right column mixes header signifiers, in some cases using all uppercase, in others bold. * The body copy in the left column uses an oblique sans and the right column uses a similar sans, minimizing contract (notice how the "after" design uses a true italic) * The "sections" in the right column are set off with pointless thin rules, which is a design annoyance so basic that Tufte yells about it early in (iirc) The Visual Display Of Quantitative Information. * The right column has no hierarchy, so the contact information is set in exactly the same prominence as the rest of the information, so clumsily that the URL runs into the margin. I guess I could go on. This is pretty basic "Non-Designers Design" Robin Williams stuff. I don't see how you can criticize this blog post by suggesting that the "before" design is better. It's not. It's artificially bad: someone took a reasonable design and a list of everything you can do wrong in a page design and built a demo. I agree with another comment on this thread though about the clip-art; it muddled the point the article was trying to make. They should have worked the same clip art into the "before" picture if they wanted to do that.

pdpi 12y ago
> Neither of the designs are good-looking (but that may be the point). I do hope that was by choice, because, if so, this illustrates beautifully how "attractive design" and "good design" are not the same thing (bonus points to be had if the author had managed to make the left poster prettier than the right one). > I agree with another comment on this thread though about the clip-art; it muddled the point the article was trying to make. They should have worked the same clip art into the "before" picture if they wanted to do that. To me,the clip art said one thing, loud and clear: "After redoing the design, I'm left with a truckload of empty space". Considering how crowded the design on the left looks like, it's easy to think that you need _more_ room to fit everything in nicely, rather than less.
reitanqild 12y ago