The important information is larger and more legible in the poster on the left. I can locate the schedule, address, phone number and URL immediately.
In the poster on the right, my eye is drawn to the enormous headings, which contain no useful information by themselves. The "Come Visit" heading isn't close enough to the address, and the address/phone/URL has been squeezed into a single block of tiny, fuzzy text. Compare that to the left poster, where each one is distinct from the other.
I feel the need to put on my glasses to read the one on the right, but not the one on the left. That alone indicates a major issue and potential loss of audience.
> The important information is larger and more legible in the poster on the left
THIS IS LARGER, SO EASIER TO READ, RIGHT?
Font size alone I agree with you (and a light - serif - white text on a black background has some issues with artifacts, which are visible on the flier), but the whole thing is a mess.
> In the poster on the right, my eye is drawn to the enormous headings, which contain no useful information by themselves.
Yes, it contains. It's an aid to point you to the right section.
Because you scan the bigger text first, the first thing most people will read is "Aikido - Beginner classes" then follow the right column
> The "Come Visit" heading isn't close enough to the address
I agree, this is debatable, one possibility would be to replace it with "Try it" and/or put "Come Visit" or "Visit Us" above the address
> and the address/phone/URL has been squeezed into a single block of tiny, fuzzy text
This is another heuristical cue and to separate it from the rest of the text.
The thing is, none of those headers are even necessary. For example, replace "Beginner Class" with "AIKIDO", remove the "Regular Classes" and "Come Visit" headings, enlarge the text, and you've already improved the poster.
For bonus points, pluralize the days ("Tuesdays 7:30 p.m.") and separate the phone and URL from the address a bit.
The point is, the information is self-describing. It doesn't need a header to announce what it is.
Your left or my left? Seriously, I assumed he was describing the one on the left for most of the discussion until showing the posters again, when I realized he didn't do his job.
The question was "which one looks cleaner?", not "which one makes it easier to find information?", and to my eye the one on the right has more noise (the balance of spacing, border around the image, more varied fonts). I guess there are arguments for both or neither, but it's clearly not cut and dry.
The one on the right is cleaner (even if it appears to be allergic to centering text), the one on the left is better at presenting information in a way that people can find what they're looking for.
The poster on the left also has slightly better call to action (CALL 603-431-8560).
tbh, neither of them are all that great. The right one introduces a serifed font which clashes with the non-serif fonts everywhere else. From a marketing perspective, Akido is often associated with clean minimalism and serifed fonts are not.
The new design also uses generally smaller font sizes, which are hard to read on a poster. This allows for the use of white space to denote sections, but it creates so much white space that the designer struggles to fill it all up with something and introduces a new design element (the brushed circle) to simply fill up space.
Where non-serifed fonts are used, they aren't particularly readable, the kerning is off and the weight is too high in general. The leading is also off in quite a few places, particularly between the section headers and the first line of the serifed-font section text.
The call to action isn't very useful if it, for example, generates calls from people who didn't read the class schedule to know if they can even take the class. I didn't say "couldn't" because it's an important distinction to make between legibility of the words and our willingness to read them before taking action.
I can't speak to whether it would materially impact the effectiveness of the ad in generating leads, but an important aspect in soliciting leads seems to be filtering them. If your potential leads don't know what your criteria are, you're more likely to get calls from people asking basic information like when the classes are, or whether their 10-year old can join. If the ad were structured in a way in which class times and age limits were highlighted, these people likely wouldn't bother calling.
You can, of course, simply repeat the information from the flyer over the phone, but if you're wondering why these people are calling to ask those questions in the first place, you might want to look at your ad design. After all, the information is there. It's just that most people see your call to action before they see that other stuff, and so they just call you instead.
I don't totally disagree. But honestly, people are too lazy to read most of either poster. If the entire thing was just
"AKIDO"
<picture of one guy throwing another guy>
603-431-8560
it would probably work as well as either of these designs, and they'll end up answering the same inane questions on the receiving end.
More importantly, the questions people ask can be good signalling to a business how they can adjust their offerings. There might be an entire market of people who really want to take Akido, but they can only do it on Thursday nights. This poster might filter them all out. But a bunch of people calling to see if they offer Thursday night beginner classes might cause the school to adjust their schedule to offer that class, thereby capturing that part of the market.
It reminds me of cheap local newspapers, I kinda have a positive reaction to it. Definitely feels more down to earth and personal. Professionalism can be a turn-off.
I think this is maybe what's going on. There are pragmatic choices that make things easier for us, but every element will have an emotional context as well.
It's odd, when I was looking at that aikido ad, I thought I could faintly smell newsprint paper...
Yeah, same here. Also I interpret it as a already well-established place, something that has been successfully run for a while. The other one screams "Hi, we are a new institution" which gives me a wary response. It just misses some smiling stockphoto woman.
There must be a lot of testing and research in "cheap looking" ads, this might be a great example of the resulting emotional responses.
I'm not a designer, but a musician. You can find pairings of performances, where if you put them side by side, the public will choose the one on the left and the musicians will choose the one on the right. The musicians may have funky tastes, but in addition, they're informed by the terminology and theory of analysis.
I think the one on the right is cleaner, but the font for the text explaining Aikido is easier to read on the left. Hence which one is 'better' is hard for me to decide.
Here's my theory about why the one on the left looks better to some: Given that this is a physical poster, I think we've come to expect a certain crammed format that we've already learnt how to navigate well (think classifieds). So it no longer feels strange or crammed.
Question for those who think the left one is cleaner: what if this was a web page? You need to look at each one zoomed-in one at a time. Would you still consider the left one cleaner?
The word you are looking for is CONVENTION. There are conventions we all know on the web - where your navigation goes etc. - there are also conventions in the real world. The thing about conventions is that you haven't got to re-learn the interface, this also applies with a physical poster. But, yes, same as you, it is familiarity with the format that makes the left one 'better'.
A better test might be: what if this was a street sign? I'd probably have to get out of my car to read the one on the right. If the goal is to convey information quickly and efficiently, I think the left one has the edge.
The one on the left really is a train wreck. All the points that are brought up with alignment, grouping, and sizing of related elements are clearly illustrated in these two examples. Not saying the right is perfect, but it's far better than the left. Worth it to reread the article and carefully consider the points if you feel otherwise.
Right, so innate it is. Folks who have studied design will be upset to learn this.
Again, I'm not saying that this is a perfect example, but the points he makes are valid. I've had to deal with similar issues creating figures and illustrations for scientific manuscripts. Scientists are not great illustrators by and large, although some are. It's worth studying the successful examples, and to adopt their practices.
The point of design is to study and think a lot so that you can create a message that viewers can receive without thinking. Most of the public have not studied design, and they are the ones your design needs to impact. Recognizing good design is innate, but creating and understandin it is not.
To me, the one on the left is better (with a few tiny changes)
. Font choice is better, it is more legible and actually it has better balance overall. So I think author "fixed" it too much :)
I thought the one on the right looked better, but honestly it's just a cosmetic preference. I didn't think the information was any harder to find or parse on the left-hand version... it just looked a bit less "professional."
The right poster has better layout, and is more "beautiful" but less readable. I want to get the important details, not admire the use if indentation and italics.
I'd argue that the one on the RIGHT is a train wreck... if it's a PHYSICAL poster, I want stuff to be readable... how can making every single important point smaller be better?
Heck, the one on the left has a much better call to action, it says CALL 603-431-8561 in big letters. The one on the right has the "Come Visit" clearer though.
The one on the right might be "cleaner", but I bet that the one on the left converts a LOT better (simply by being more readable).
What I found interesting was when the one on the left was half below the fold, it appeared much cleaner than the one on the right. Only when viewed in their entirety did I find the one on the right to be cleaner.
The important information is not "Beginner Class" but rather "Starts Sunday..."— The right one is better, but absent a bit more emphasis on that, you're not getting anything out of it.
