Meaningless but pretty words
May 17th, 2007 by Bill
The Adobe people are pushing their Adobe Creative Suite 3 these days (for those who love acronyms, aka Adobe CS3). And that’s fine but I find that they, along with many other companies that market using email, send very little content and a whole lot of design.
It’s makes sense in one way, if you’re Adobe, given the products they sell. But these emails frustrate me to no end because I can so seldom find any words that a) I can see enough to read and b) carry any meaning.
While the text looks nice, helping with the overall design, the size of the font makes the words difficult to read. On top of that, with the exception of the headline in black, the remaining text is shaded out - they use a degree of grey.
So for all intents and purposes, I’ve been emailed an image and a logo. And I’m expected to click on this. Well, that ain’t happening. The image may be intriguing but if you seriously want me to click on something, or even to open your next marketing email (essentially spam) you should put some text in it that is easy see, easy to read and that actually says something.
You know, something that might have information that would get me interested?
Just a thought.
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I wish I had a dollar for every time designers get away with using too-small, too-faint or otherwise too-difficult-to-read text. I’d be rich!
I also wish I knew why they do that. I think the ones that do must be only thinking in the one facet of design, that of the visual/aesthetic, while ignoring all the other important stuff that goes into a design… like clearly communicating a message.