Presented by: Mitch Boretz University of California, Riverside. and Colleen Jolly 24 Hour Company

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2 Presented by: Mitch Boretz University of California, Riverside and Colleen Jolly 24 Hour Company May 2008

3 Introduction Will font selection determine whether your proposal wins or loses? Almost certainly not. However Educated font selection can make life easier on the reviewer Understanding how your proposal will be reviewed can enable you to produce a more legible, readable document We can assume that happy reviewers are more favorable reviewers

4 Overview In this hour, we will cover: Why Now Is the Time to Think About Font The Bygone Days of Ink on Paper What s Different About the New Days of Liquid Crystal Pixels What We Know About Legibility and What We Don t Some Real-Life Adventures and the Results Recommendations

5 Why Now Is the Time to Think About Font Selection

6 Motivation: Why Discuss This? 2007 was a big year for font and formatting requirements at Federal agencies National Science Foundation changed font requirements, then changed most of the way back five months later National Institutes of Health switched from paper to on-line proposal submission Practice and policy are ahead of knowledge despite some studies and a wealth of fundamental knowledge, we don t really know what we are doing yet

7 NSF Font Adventure The Old Policy Font no smaller than 10pt Density no greater than 15 characters per linear inch and 6 lines per vertical inch Margins on all sides of at least 1 inch Smaller fonts allowed in figures and tables Legibility is paramount if reviewer can t read your proposal, he/she can return it without review New Policy (07/01/08) Font must be either Arial, Helvetica, Palatino Linotype, or Georgia. No Times family fonts. Font no smaller than 10 point Smaller type still allowed in figures and tables as long as it is legible Use only black Legibility rule still applies: return/reject if it can t be read Newest Policy (01/05/08) Font must be either: Arial, Courier New, or Palatino Linotype, 10 point or larger; Or Times New Roman, 11 point or larger; Or Computer Modern at 11 point or larger Smaller type still allowed in figures and tables as long as it is legible

8 The NSF Font Adventure How that looks in practice: Times New Roman 10 Point The cow jumped over the moon. 11 Point The cow jumped over the moon. 12 Point The cow jumped over the moon. Georgia 10 Point The cow jumped over the moon. 11 Point The cow jumped over the moon. 12 Point The cow jumped over the moon. Palatino Linotype 10 Point The cow jumped over the moon. 11 Point The cow jumped over the moon. 12 Point The cow jumped over the moon. Arial 10 Point The cow jumped over the moon. 11 Point The cow jumped over the moon. 12 Point The cow jumped over the moon. Verdana 10 Point The cow jumped over the moon. 11 Point The cow jumped over the moon. 12 Point The cow jumped over the moon. Helvetica 10 Point The cow jumped over the moon. 11 Point The cow jumped over the moon. 12 Point The cow jumped over the moon. Courier New 10 Point The cow jumped over the moon. 11 Point The cow jumped over the moon. 12 Point The cow jumped over the moon.

9 The Point Times, Arial, and Palatino were designed for the printed page Georgia and Verdana, among others, were designed for on-screen legibility They are easier to see on screen, but they also take up more space You get 10-15% fewer words to tell your story Times New Roman Arial The cow jumped over the moon. (10pt) The cow jumped over the moon. (10pt) The cow jumped over the moon. (11pt) The cow jumped over the moon. (11pt) The cow jumped over the moon. The cow jumped over the moon. (12pt) (12pt) 1 1 What do you do?

10 Where This Leaves Us Typefaces designed for the screen are a relatively new innovation. They represent an attempt to compensate for the lack of resolution of the bitmaps of CRTs and for the fact that the majority of fonts available today were designed to be read on paper. The use of these older fonts on computer displays forces one to read type designed in another era for another medium. Eric Weisenmiller Virginia Polytechnic University, 1999

11 The Bygone Days of Ink on Paper

12 Paper and Ink: The Received Wisdom All you used to need to know: Thou shalt use a serif font (e.g. Times) for body type Thou shalt use sans-serif fonts (e.g. Arial) for anything much larger or much smaller than body type Thou shalt apply an optimal size-towidth ratio of 1.5 picas per point (A point is 1 / 72 inch, a pica is 12 points, or 1 / 6 ) Thou shalt align paper vertically (e.g. portrait)

13 What s Different About the New Days of Liquid Crystal Pixels?

14 Pixels On Screen: An As-Yet-Unwritten Gospel On-line writing is an emerging field The principles and guidelines will evolve as we learn more

15 Screen vs. Paper Reading Studies show that reading from a computer screen is about 30% slower than reading from paper Screen resolution is low compared to printed material Letters don t feel smooth to the eye, which slows down the eye when it tries to read text Screen glare can impair reading and cause eye strain Screen size can be smaller than a page of printed material Desktop computers are not portable and can be less convenient to use than printed material All too often, documents that were never designed for the screen, such as proposals perhaps, are being dumped online This common pitfall can make documents unreadable and inaccessible to readers

16 What We Know About Legibility and What We Don t

17 The Fundamental Building Blocks of Visual Communication Letters, words, and images are the building blocks of visual communication Individual letters of the alphabet are constructed from anatomical parts, as identifiable as the parts we associate with human anatomy The anatomical terminology is similar Arms Shoulders Ear Legs Feet Fonts are like the clothes that words wear Joint Just like we make judgments about people by the clothes they wear, so we make judgments about the information we are reading by typefaces Shoulder Leg

18 Type Talk Typography The arrangement and selection of faces of type, sizes, and spacing on the printed page Font All the letters, punctuation, marks and numerals in the same point size in a particular type style Typeface A family of letters using the same design motif, but varying in style, width, weight, and texture Type Family Each single typeface has variations that include different widths, weights, italics, and styles Example: Georgia Type Family Georgia Regular Georgia Bold Georgia Italic Georgia Bold Italic

19 Type Talk Measuring Type Points We refer to type in points 72 points = 1 inch The white space between words and lines is all measured in points Type that is 36 points is approximately 1 / 2 tall Picas A pica is made up of 12 points There are 6 picas to one inch Line lengths are measured in picas Weight The weight of a typeface relates to the lightness or heaviness of the strokes Weights may be referred to as light, medium, bold, black, extra bold, or ultra black

20 Type Talk X-height The distance between the baseline of a line of the type and the tops of the main body of lower case letters (excluding ascenders and descenders) The x-height is a factor in typeface identification and readability THE BASELINE The x-height of a letter Ascender The upward vertical stem on some lowercase letter, such as h and b that extends above the x-height Descender The portion of some lowercase letters, such as g and y, that extends or descends below the baseline Ascender Descender

21 Type Talk Serif vs. Sans Serif Serif type is often used for text or body copy Serif type is easier to read than sans serif The serifs help your eyes with the horizontal flow Serif typefaces are more formal than sans serif ones Line Length and Readability Our eyes scan a line of text, or a least several words at a time If a line of text is too long, it tires our eyes and makes it difficult to locate the beginning of the line that follows If a line is too short, sentence structure might be disrupted, and the eye must change lines too often Sans serif faces should be typeset in shorter lines than serif typefaces for maximum readability Serif Serif Sans Serif

22 Legibility and Readability Legibility is the most fundamental aspect of typography Type is to be read, and it should always be readable! Type size and readability When type is too large or too small, it becomes difficult to read Type for text should be set in a range of 10 to 12 points depending on the x-height Different typefaces set in the same point size may appear to be larger or smaller according to their x-height To fit a large amount of copy into a small space, select a typeface that is small, medium weight, with a large x-height

23 The Personality of Type Each typeface has a distinct personality Type should be selected for its appropriateness to your design, message, and audience Serif fonts (such as Times New Roman and Georgia) appear traditional, serious, scholarly, corporate, and business-like Serf fonts are usually more readable when being read in long, printed blocks of text Sans serif fonts (such as Arial and Verdana) reflect a modern, clean, or understated personality Sans serif fonts are usually more legible than serif fonts when projected, or read on-screen

24 Some Real-Life Adventures and Results

25 How Hard It Is To Change From Nancy Kessler, Vice President, Shipley Associates (August 2007) The proposal I mentioned was actually almost 10 years ago. It was the Joint Strike Fighter procurement The proposal was submitted in a 3-column landscape format to accommodate the online evaluation software used by the customer. I have not heard of another such, so it might be logical to conclude that the software did not improve the evaluation process sufficiently to create a permanent change in the way bids are laid out. I cited that case to make the point that customers needs should drive how you respond, no matter how unusual that request may be.

26 How Hard It Is To Change APMP Commercial News Group (February 2008) Have any of you run into RFP responses being submitted in PowerPoint format? I have an account rep who has heard from her customer that some companies are submitting proposals in PowerPoint format. The customer seems to think that this format is easier for them to digest and understand. One Response: My first reaction to reading your was, Yikes, better get up on my PowerPoint skills. We have not seen this and I am hoping we don t. It is bad enough that some clients have adopted web-based response tools that really make it difficult to respond.

27 What To Worry About Next Imagine submitting your proposal in Hypertext YIKES! Making the transition from print to online media will make authoring proposals vastly different Not just a change in technique, you must also learn new skills and take on new roles Hypertext is non-linear it reconfigures the roles of text, reader, and writer Through navigating links, reviewers can jump around your proposal as they wish No single order determines the sequence of information to be read

28 Recommendations

29 What Should We Do? APMP should get out in front of this question Work with government procurement officers to develop standards for proposals that will be reviewed on-screen Set uniform policies for disclosing how proposals will be reviewed Maybe encourage migration to the landscape layout for proposals?

30 Questions/Discussion Punch Line: Did you notice that we used Times and Arial as the fonts in this presentation?

31 For Further Reading

32 Usability News, 2001 Michael Bernard, Melissa Mills, Michelle Peterson, & Kelsey Storrer, A Comparison of Popular Online Fonts: Which is Best and When? The study asked 22 participants, ages (average: 25) to read ~1,000-word passages (aprx. 2 printed pages) in 12 fonts on a 17-inch computer monitor with 1024x728 resolution. Reading time varied by as much as 40 seconds depending on font. Tahoma, Times, and Agency were fast reads; Bradley, Courier, and Corsiva (?) were slower.

33 Web Marketing Today, 2001 Ralph F. Wilson, HTML Text Font Readability Study The researcher asked test subjects (how many? who? It doesn t say) to compare two fonts side by side on the screen and indicate which they preferred. Subjects overwhelmingly preferred sans-serif fonts. Among sans-serif fonts, Verdana was most preferred. The study also looked at font size on the screen. 64% of subjects said Verdana 12 point is too large; only 14% said Arial 12 is too large. Overwhelming majorities considered Arial and Verdana 9 point to be too small.

34 ACM, 1995 Thomas S. Tullis, Jennifer L. Boynton, and Harry Hersh, Readability of Fonts in the Windows Environment (presentation at Association for Computing Machinery CHI 95 conference) Fifteen volunteers (ages 27-45) read passages in a combination of 12 fonts and sizes (48 possible permutations). The researchers studied reading time and accuracy and asked the subjects about their preferences. Readers used a 15-inch monitor with 1024x768 resolution. Very small fonts (6.0 to 8.25 point) had the poorest reading times and accuracy. Fonts 9 point and larger were much better. Readers preferred the MS Sans Serif font overall, followed by Arial and MS Serif. (Note that the study was conducted before we had Georgia, Verdana, and some other choices.) The largest font size in the study was 9.75 point, and it was the most-preferred size.

35 Illinois State University, 1999 Eric M. Weisenmiller, A Study of the Readability of On- Screen Type (doctoral dissertation) Readers were given passages in Georgia, Verdana, Times, and Arial on screen and on paper to determine whether sans serif and serif typefaces optimized for on-screen viewing significantly improve reading rates and reading comprehension. The study spends a lot of time comparing 8- bit vs. 1-bit rendering on the screen in other words, whether to use a color or black-and-white monitor and it makes oblique mention of up-and-coming display media such as LCDs. The study did not find improvements in readability from using Verdana or Georgia. (search etd )