Moran Media

Graphic Design and Instruction

Marketing Monday

Marketing Monday: Fonts for struggling readers?

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opendyslexicglyphs
from opendyslexic.org the open source font designed for dyslexics

How can we make sure we reach our audience? Speak in their language, and in this case, use the font that works best for them.  Today I’m going to talk about fonts for struggling readers.

If you know anyone who works with fonts, artists, printers, layout people, and the average internet snob, you’ve heard (or read) them complain about comic sans or some other font they hate.  People praise Helvetica and other fonts they deem cool, yet often they don’t discuss what a font can do for readability.

opendyslexic.org is a website that designed an open source font that makes reading easier for dyslexics.  Imagine that, a font that makes it easier for dyslexics to read! If you ever knew a person with dyslexia you know what a challenge reading can be, you know how hard it is, and how they end up missing out on the joy that is reading.  This font could change their lives. You can even install the font on your webpage, and thanks to google fonts and html5 people will see it even if they don’t have the font installed.

There is another font out there for dyslexics that is a pay font, it’s a bit expensive and while I don’t begrudge anyone wanting to be paid for their work, when it comes to reading everyone should have access to a font to help them.  That’s my opinion, others will vary.  I’m working on a children’s book, when I saw this font I decided I would offer two printing options, regular, and this font.  If it costs more to produce (because the dyslexic font prints will print in shorter runs) I have decided I will eat the cost.  It’s worth it to get kids reading.

SchoolHouse FontWhat about for non dyslexic kids? Often people think comic sans and cartoony fonts are good for kids, and they are half right.  The more relaxed a font is, or the more fun looking, the more accessible it is to kids, but it still needs a strong structure and shape for them to develop.

My favorite font for kids is a font called Schoolhouse.  I got my copy of the font a million years ago of a font disc called teacher fonts.  It is a pay font, but you can get the older version of the font open source off cnet. There are two variations of the font, Z, and D.  Or in my old copy, Cursive, or Printed.  These are the fonts we grew up learning penmanship with. In this font you can get dotted lines, letters with the arrows, or just the font. It’s easy and familiar to read.

One school in the UK even hired someone to make a font for them, a font that worked with all kids and read well.  You can learn more about that here on their website. Their font is a pay font, most likely to pay back what they invested, and to help the school, but if you are an organization you can contact them directly, and they may have alternative programs, but they don’t make that public.  If you visit their site you can see the site is in their font, it is very easy to read and well spaced.

Some other great fonts are Sassoon Primary and Gil Sans Infant, for san serif fonts.  You would use san serif fonts for headings and things you wanted to stand out.  Not a body of text, but worksheets could be done in san serif.  For body text you want something with serifs, it’s much easier to read, you can also try Bembo Schoolbook or Plantin Schoolbook. These fonts were all made for kids, so they were designed with this idea in mind.

What if I can’t install fonts on my computer? Many users don’t have access to change their fonts on their own computer because it’s owned by their employer or they just don’t know how.  You are not out of luck, you just need to learn to pick well. You want the font to have a lower case a displayed as we teach kids to write it, a circle with a line, no overhanging arch.  Next you want the g to look as we teach them to write it, and lastly you want the uppercase I and the lower case l to not look identical. Look for fonts with mono or schoolhouse in the name, often they are a good fit. On a PC Cambria which I believed comes with a PC, or at least MS word, is a surprisingly good font. On a Mac Casual is a good fun and relaxed font, as is Chalkboard.  Century gothic is OK, it works well except the uppercase I and lowercase l are too similar.

 

Marketing Monday: Clever Packaging

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I’m a sucker for a good package. Heck I’ve been known to buy tea just because it came in a triangle bag.  When I went into University the plan was to become a package designer.  I came close a few times. One company I worked for the job was there and if I wanted it, I had to wait for the former artist to retire, I choose instead to progress my career and not wait in a position that while wonderful, wasn’t improving my skills or challenging me as an artist.  The second time I was working with a company on freelance terms designing custom gift card holders.  I started with demonstrating how they worked, taking a 3D experience and showing it off in 2D. I never got to the part where I’d design the holders and the company ended up outsourcing my role overseas. It was a lot of fun to work with and it made me wonder, what if my original plan came true?  Could I be responsible for some of these awesome packages you see now?

Check out this article on Diply: 30 Creative Packaging Designs That Are Sheer Brilliance.

In the end I’m happy with where my career went, had I focused on package design I wouldn’t be building websites or working in print the way I have, and that to me has been fantastic.  Plus, I love being able to work in any area of the graphic field, flexibility means this job is never boring.

What are some of your favorite packages?  Do they make you buy the product?  Tell me in the comments.

Marketing Monday: Schedule Facebook Posts

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FBcalendar

Did you know you could schedule facebook posts?

If I have set up a website for you with a blog you know already that you can write your posts ahead of time and schedule them to post for you.  That’s what I’m doing with this post.  I’m writing it on a friday and scheduling it for a monday.  I find using this tactic lets me work on a post and get it done ahead of time, but conform to a post schedule I have made for myself.  Also, I find sometimes I have more time to write posts, and sometimes more inspiration, if I schedule the posts then I have a nice backlog of posts. So when a week rolls around when I just don’t know what to blog about or I am swamped with work for a client, or I’m on vacation, my posts can continue to come out without me having to log into the website to hit post.

I love this feature, and have grown used to it.  I have at times wanted to do this with social media.  With tools like HootSuite you can schedule tweets, facebook updates, you name it.  Hootsuit has a very limited free version now, and two levels of paid.  It’s a great programs and I have helped a few organizations learn to use it to maximize their social media presence.

Today (friday) I learned that facebook pages has added this feature to their interface and you can post to facebook ahead of time!  Not just what you post on your blog and automatically share (if you aren’t doing this, let me know and I can walk you through it) to your facebook page, but regular statuses, images, and videos!

Screen shot 2014-10-23 at 10.58.30 PMThis is fantastic, I have scheduled a few posts from my archives to my brand new facebook page (like it if you haven’t already) so things I wrote in the past can be found there.  To schedule a post is simple, just write your status as normal, and then click on the little clock icon in the bottom left side (as seen in the image to the left), you can pick a time and a date.  Then, when you visit your page you can also see what is set to post in the future, in case you have any second thoughts.Screen shot 2014-10-23 at 10.58.22 PM

Marketing Monday: Facebook ads and why they can hurt your brand.

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Screen shot 2014-10-17 at 11.58.08 PMI have had a lot of clients and other organizations I work with suggest we pay to boost posts on facebook or use facebook ads to gain likes on. I always tell them it’s a bad idea, but I haven’t used the scientific method to prove my theories.  I didn’t want to risk the reputation of these people or the brand to prove my theories either.  Below is a video from Veritasium who demonstrates how these ads work, and how they work against you.  The video is about 9 minutes, but it is completely worth the watch.  Being involved in social media is a great way to grow your brand, but the best way to get ahead is word of mouth, being engaged with your audience, not paying to boost your posts.

This also is good advice for how you promote your page.  When pages first started you needed 50 likes to get a custom URL, so when you started a page you would ask everyone you knew to like it.  Now you don’t want to do that, you want to suggest people like your page only if you think they will interact with it.  If I had a page that was for a Vegan restaurant for example, I wouldn’t ask my husband, a staunch Meatatarian (meatatarian; one who doesn’t like vegetables and eats mostly meat and starches) to like the page.  His like wouldn’t help me, because when the page shared it’s latest Tofu dish he wouldn’t like the post or comment on it, nor would he share it.  His lack of interaction would tell facebook that the post is un interesting and unwanted, so they wouldn’t put it on other people’s news feeds.  Now if I were to invite my Yoga Instructor, or Chef friend, while they may not be strictly vegan, they may be more open to the latest Tofu dish and would comment or like it, telling facebook the post is interesting, and let it spread to others.Screen shot 2014-10-18 at 12.08.49 AM

Screen shot 2014-10-18 at 12.31.14 AMFacebook is insidious in trying to get you to buy these ads and pay to boost these posts.  In this screen capture you can see that they tell me that 27 of my friends have paid for post boosts.  I have to wonder how accurate that is.  I know a few people who have admitted to paying to boost posts, they all told me how their engagement went down after too, but 27?  That seems like a high number.  I have to wonder how true this number is.  Even when you open a page they build a payment method into the creation of the page, skip that, always.

How about you?  Have you ever paid to boost a post on facebook?  Does this video change your mind, or confirm it, on how advertising works on facebook?  Let me know in the comments.

Don’t Stop Blogging

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DontStopBloggingI always tell my clients that they should be updating their website’s blog at least once a week.  That an active blog means their page isn’t static and it gives customers, clients, their community, a reason to come back to their site, and it gives google a reason to crawl it.  I also tell them that if they have something new they need to post it!  Yes I am terrible at taking my own advice.  When I start working for a client I am only thinking about their needs, so my page often goes without updates.

Like most advice in life, it’s often not followed by the one that gives it.

Truth of the matter is that you get busy, and sure, I know the best tricks to handle that.  Write a bunch of blog posts ahead of time and let the auto schedule publish them at the right time.  Again, not followed.  Heck, I have designed and redesigned a bunch of sites over the summer and haven’t even put them in the portfolio let alone made a post about them.

It’s hard to remember to promote yourself when you’re running around busy actually working, and when it’s a one woman shop you can’t delegate these small tasks on someone else.  Most of your life you have been raised not to brag, and when you post about yourself or your product it can feel like bragging.

Still, these tasks need to be done.  When a new customer comes to your site and sees you haven’t posted anything new in a year they get the impression that you’re not an active business. They have no way of knowing you’ve been busily attending to your customers because they only see your inactive site.

What’s the solution?  Well it isn’t going back to business as usual.  It’s time to try something new, create a new routine for yourself to get you back into blogging and updating your site.  Perhaps give yourself a reward each time you complete a post?  It sounds simply and possibly silly, but we as humans respond well to positive rewards.  Find something small that you value and reward yourself with it, something as small as a relaxing bath, or playing your favorite game on facebook, an extra hour of TV, a muffin, you name it!  Find something to reward yourself for good work.

Besides, if you blog/brag about the good work you’re doing, you will likely start feeling even better about what you do.

Marketing Monday: Copyright, respect it, or pay the price.

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Jack Daniels is pretty awesome in protecting their copyrightBack in July many of us heard about “The Nicest Cease and Desist Letter Ever.”  When a book cover looked far too similar to the well known Jack Daniels label.  Sure the book cover was changed, but not enough to protect Jack Daniels from having to step in.  Copyright holders have a duty to send these letters, to stop people from using their trademarks or they could end up having their brand seen as generic, (Further reading on Metonymy)  but Jack Daniels did it with class and style, and they helped out a local.  Because of this diplomatic move they gained themselves a lot of attention, free publicity, and I bet customers.

When you are working on a project, no matter what it is, book cover, flier, business card, store sign, website, anything, you want to make sure your work is original.  Searching goole images isn’t your key to free images, most of those images are copyright by someone.  Fonts are copyright, you can’t use the Disney font on your fundraising flier, if you do, Mr. Mouse won’t be as nice as Mr. JD.

What can you do?  

  • Have you art created for you, by an artist who understands copyright (like me perhaps?) and has your best interest in mind.
  • Use an image with a creative commons license that allows you to adapt and use for commercial work, just make sure you give credit.
  • Use an image from the Public Domain.
  • Buy Stock Images, where you are paying for the use of the image.  (Sites like clipart.com & istockphoto are prime examples)
  • Use clip art from your paid programs like Microsoft Word, the clip art in your program is there for you to use, so long as you comply to their guidelines and don’t claim the work to be your own.

Is it really that important?  After all I just have a local business, no one is going to check up on me.

Not true.  Let’s not forget when Disney Sued a Daycare center for having their copyright work on their walls.  It wasn’t even in the ads.  Granted, Disney is the most notorious when it comes to suing over copyright but it’s important to remember. Let’s not forget when Hello Kitty sued a local child beauty pageant either.  It would be really sad if your great project was the cause of bankruptcy thanks to a law suit.

Wait, but I see people using copyright work all the time.

Sure you do, and they may be getting away with it, for now.  That could catch up with them any day.  Do you really want to gamble with your business, your charity, your work?  People jay walk all the time when it’s against the law, it doesn’t mean they should and it doesn’t mean they never will get ticketed.  More importantly, do you want to be the kind of person that would take something that isn’t yours and use it as your own?