Issue #70
February 14, 2008

Welcome to Inside Freelance Design (IFD), your free, bi-weekly e-letter from American Writers & Artists Inc. Every other week, you can receive this special alert with secrets, tips, and insights from AWAI's graphic design pros to help you improve your skills and reach your goal of becoming a professional graphic designer in the fastest time possible.

IN THIS ISSUE:
  • How to Lead Your Reader Effortlessly to the Sale
  • Quick Tip: Finding Just the Right Font
  • EXTRA! EXTRA! News and Job Opportunities
Easy Design Strategies That Lead Your Reader to the Sale
By Kammy Thurman

Have you ever seen a flier, a Web landing page, or some other advertisement where everything on the page was screaming at you so loudly that you didn’t know where to start reading?

You probably didn’t spend much time trying to figure out where to go before you gave up and trashed it.

Avoid this confusion in your designs. You can do it by creating a reading “path” for your reader to follow. A well-constructed path feels so easy and natural your reader won’t even realize you’re intentionally leading him along.

Successful reading paths get their power to guide the reader by using this specific design hierarchy…

  1. The headline – The headline carries 80% of the responsibility for the sale. You want to spend a good deal of time designing it for maximum impact. This means using big, bold letters at least 3 times larger than the body copy. Use bold colors too. Stay away from light colors – especially pastels. (They’re not good for readability.)

    Break long headlines into easy-to-read chunks with line breaks. And put plenty of white space around them to tell the reader “I’m important, read me first!” Sans serif typefaces like Helvetica, Myriad, or Arial work great for headlines. They look clean and easily readable in large sizes.

  2. The deck – This is the sub-headline that comes right underneath the headline and before the “Dear Reader” part of the sales letter. The deck helps readers move from the headline into the body copy. It is generally used to explain the headline further and give readers an additional push into the rest of the letter. Think of it as the neck that connects the headline to the body copy.

    The deck will be noticeably smaller than the headline, but quite a bit larger than the body copy. If you have a 36-point headline and 12-point body copy, figure 22- to 24-point type for the deck. You can either use the same font you used for the headline, or use the font you’ll use in the body copy. Don’t use a third font, as too many fonts will look confusing and amateurish. However, you can use a lighter weight font than you used for the headline: For example, Arial Bold instead of Arial Black.

  3. Subheads – These are used to break up the body copy and keep the page interesting. I use the same color in subheads that I used in the headline, as opposed to using black. Colored subheads draw attention and help hold the reader in the sales message. The headline, deck, and subheads together tell the sales story well enough that a reader could make a decision to buy if that’s all they read (which is what many people do). Folks who want more info will then go back and read the body copy.

  4. The body copy – This is the main sales message, and needs to be very readable. In print copy, serif type – such as Times Roman or Georgia – is easier to read than sans serif (Arial or Verdana). But the opposite is true on the Web. Make sure the font is large enough – 11 or 12 points in most cases, and 13 or 14 points for older readers. Never go below 10 points. That’s too small for easy reading.

  5. Other attention grabbers – Place sidebars, bursts, pull-quotes, and other attention grabbers throughout the piece to pull readers’ attention to important information. These give readers a little surprise, and hold their interest much better than pages of text with a few subheads here and there.

    At the bottom of each page – or at least every odd-numbered page – add a text box that says “Over please,” or something similar, to direct readers to the next page. Even though this may seem unnecessary (who doesn’t know to turn the page?), testing has proven it keeps readers from using the end of the page as an excuse to bail out of the message.

This hierarchy should be used in every sales piece you design: fliers, posters, letters, buck slips, lift notes, postcards, magalogs, and even orders forms to make reading – and making the sale – much easier.

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Quick Tip: Where to Find Just the Right Font for Your Project
By Kammy Thurman

When you’re planning a design for a project, you have literally thousands of fonts to choose from… many more than you’ll ever need or want to use as a DM designer. The “old standards” like Times and Helvetica became standards because they work effectively without drawing attention to themselves.

But their familiarity is also their downside. Using less-familiar fonts can add a sense newness to your design. So it makes sense to keep up to date on what’s available – even if you’re not ready to buy.

Try to look at as many different fonts as possible. But remember that in DM graphic design, you don’t want to use anything too wild or self-conscious. Many font sites offer free resources – such as veer.com’s Flont technology (http://www.veer.com/flont/) that lets you test thousands of fonts. It’s easier to choose the right one when you can see it in your own words.

Other good font sites are:
http://www.linotype.com/
http://www.fonts.com/
http://www.adobe.com/type/index.html

On Adobe’s site, you can browse fonts by the way they’re used – as headlines, body text, etc. This is a very helpful feature.

To learn more design strategies to boost your design or copywriting income, check out the Copywriter’s Six-Figure Design Library at http://www.thedesignerslife.com/library/

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EXTRA! EXTRA! News and Job Opportunities
  • Oxygen Education needs a skilled graphic designer capable of creating original graphics for (and laying out) technical and instructional materials. These materials will be delivered in e-book format, so previous experience working with e-books is valuable. An understanding of technical writing is beneficial, and a candidate with a degree is preferred. Send your information to hr@o2ed.com.
  • @Tech, a staffing specialist, is looking to place a graphic designer in a six-month contract project. You’ll work onsite with a team to develop designs for a variety of materials. You should know the Adobe Creative Suite and PowerPoint. Experience with Flash and After Effects is a plus. Send your information to Mae Murphy at 8014848@JobFrenzy1.com.
  • Soundline, a music publisher in Randolph, NJ, has an opening for a graphic designer to join their team full-time. You should have experience managing a team. You must know Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign. Send work samples and your resume to jobs@soundline.com.
COMING NEXT ISSUE:
  • A New USP for Your Success: Become a "Green Designer"
  • Quick Tip: How to Merge PDF Files
* ABOUT INSIDE FREELANCE DESIGN *

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