March 2016 | Dunk Design

How can a font help your emails matter?

We’ve all suffered from feedback that an email is too long or too hard to read – could changing the font make it more palatable and your messages more memorable?

Rebecca Greenfield wrote an interesting piece on this for Bloomberg Business last year. She spoke to a number of great font designers, the likes of Bruno Maag, Gerry Leonidas and Jose Scaglione, who designed Literata, the Google Play books font. It’s worth a read but they all agreed the future may see us all using a new email font to at least help get some of those dull, but extremely important, messages read.

We love a bit of Helvetica ourselves, but we know that its’ lack of consistent spacing makes it harder to read in large amounts and so we never recommend using it in long emails or reports.

Our advice is, when you have a long or important message to convey by email, try changing the fonts and see if it has an impact. Test messages with friendly colleagues and friends to get their feedback – try both serif and sans-serif fonts and see if it affects the impact of your message. But please steer well clear of Comic Sans!

Big Bang Data – making digital space useful.

Whether you embrace data or fear Big Brother, it was fascinating. It showcased the alarming access to ‘semi-private’ data right through to how inspiring the digital age is. We saw the power and importance of archiving, along with how data visualisation is an art form in itself, as well as how it can inform key decisions.

But overall, it has never been more important to know your audience when it comes to design.

The exhibit states that 90% of the world’s data was created in the past 2 years. That’s on a global scale, but every business with a website, social media presence, MES data or just an app, is also exponentially increasing the data they collect. How you use it effectively to drive marketing and design is the next big challenge.

All agencies creating customer and employee touch points for your business can benefit from the data you’re collecting, and do a better job for you when you share it with them (subject to your privacy policy and data protection laws, of course). And that’s from a simple print voucher right through to a complex eCommerce site, data can help to drive and inspire creativity.

So explore Google Analytics, combine it with your market research and try your own hand at data visualisation with Tableau and the like. And please share the outputs with your trusted agency partners – you’ll be astounded at how much more effective it will make your marketing spend.

Design: only 50% of the job.

For the best part of 25 years I’ve worked on design-for-print projects from the bizarre to the borderline impossible and, for the most part, have enjoyed every second of the process of applying creativity to commerce.

But there’s a part of the process which designers rarely talk about with their clients: print and distribution. Without these we are redundant. The most effective design in the world is of no use if your print standards aren’t high enough and in the hands of your customer at the right time. And in the hospitality sector where I’ve cut my cloth this is always going to be 100% essential. And that’s where everyone needs an efficient and experienced print and distribution maestro.

Allow me to share some stats with you;

About 3 times a year we undertake print and distribution for 1 client approximately 350,000 litho and digitally printed items broken down into 24 different menus and pieces of point-of-sale.
Over 3 days these are then bespokely picked, collated, packed and delivered to restaurants from Aberdeen to Plymouth, Belfast to Eastbourne and over 250 destinations in between.
On time, in full. 100% success.
And, at last count, with over 2.6 million print impressions for a single client last year, we like to think we’ve got some great design working hard to deliver improved results for some of our favourite clients.

So, in the spirit of International Women’s Day this week, I salute and thank the most efficient and conscientious print and delivery system I have ever known.

Ladies, and gentlemen, please be upstanding and raise a glass of sherry to MY print and distribution maestro: Leigh Hammans. (Not that she gets much of a chance to drink but when she does it’s usually a sherry).

Cheers Leigh!

Talk to me.

Colourful Pop art illustration of a woman

Their data will show them that I shop with them 3 or 4 times a week, mainly between 12 noon and 2pm, and usually buy sandwiches or salads. I don’t think it takes a lot of processing power to work out I’m buying lunch – so why do they keep sending me offers for nightwear?

The offers I get seem intent on making me buy things I have no interest in, rather than buying more of the things I am interested in. Are they just pushing their agenda, rather than understanding mine?

Why aren’t they – and many other retailers – using the data they are collecting in a way that’s relevant to me? Are they still trying to catch up?

Personalisation should be creating a stronger bond with customers. From knowing where I am using wifi, to what I ordered and when, they certainly have the means to communicate with me in a meaningful way. Instead, sending me copious emails asking me to review my purchases isn’t showing an interest in me – sending me a follow up email with an offer on a linked product could be.

I’m assured that brands are using algorithms and neuroscience to create a more intuitive and mindful retail and e-commerce experience. That could easily mean that the home page of the sites I buy from could be personalised to me, from the content and images that are served, to the soundtrack playing.

Am I expecting too much? Am I alone in thinking data about me is valuable and I should be rewarded in a meaningful way for sharing it?

How can a font help your emails matter?

Big Bang Data – making digital space useful.

Design: only 50% of the job.

Talk to me.

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