Font and Page Layout Challenge

[Gare]

Oh, my Goodness,; just when I thought this thread was withering, I received an almost-perfectly designed email from...First National Bank. It took me a minute to Google the bank's location and lo and behold, it's in Africa, probably close to the Barrister's digs.

First, I received this nicely-typed letter, explaining that if I didn't kindly activate my ATM card—um, which I don't have—my card could be comprised. Now, I'm a PC-kinda guy and don't want an innocent card compromised, so perhaps I should open the attachment, eh?





Nahhh! See the typographic challenge here is: the choice of fonts. If you don't specify a font in email, you're sending what we call "Plain Text", there is no certainty that you message will arrive flush left, Fully Justified, or some font size you don't want.

Your document could be compromised, so any suggestions, such as using HTML formatting for the email, would be great here. Also the use of all caps 3/4 of the way through the message is just wrong. If the designer meant this to be the headline, it should be at the top of the layout, and perhaps a larger font size, right?

NOW, we're talking! The designer finally sent me a second email, with a positively knock-out layout:



I can see that this designer's company is serious about my business. And theirs, with those spiffy JPEG logos., first generation it looks like. I particularly like the section about eBucks, seeing as I have none, but the spirit of the message shouldn't be overlooked. Besides, 30,000eB must certainly amount to more than I currently have in my First National Bank account!

How do we feel about the first and second design?

Improvements? Any copywriting errors? Any copyrighting errors? Punctuation? Use of the Swiss Grid, as I taught in a Xara Xone tutorial?

C'mon, let's help this person out. They sent me two HTML attachments, and if we can't help them out with the message design, perhaps we can take a look at their website and do a little makeover, huh?

[Gare]

I'm feelin' a little jazzed today, because I got an email telling me that's I'm still the CEO of The Xara Xone (although Magix might not know about it), and I'm embroiled in a domain name brouhaha right now.




One of the layout problems I noticed is that there are "bad breaks" in the text, so that there is a lot of open and close quotes distracting from the message. Boy, these guys really want XARAXONE as a domain name, don't they? They tell us that our name here conflicts with their plans to register xaraxone.org.cn, xaraxone.ccn, xaraxone.asia..whew!...and probably xaraxone.xxx!

I see a bulleted list as a way to better organize this litany of domain names. Additionally, a nice design touch would be a handwritten signature from "Jim." Jim seems like a friendly and casual guy, no?

Anyhow, let's create a clean document that we're all chuffed about, and see if we can't give Jim some design ideas for the future websites. Me, I'd recommend beginning with Gotham, all fonts in the family, black text is always a good, forward-moving and powerful accent, and I think full justification will help eliminate some of the "rivers" in the text.

Let's go! Let's show how to design page layouts as the Pros do!



My Best,

Gary

[Gare]

Oh, Gosh...here we go again with boring, boring Letter Gothic monospaced, when a much more elegant and authoritative Times New Roman and Full Justification would get these people's message across better:



I don't know why it takes 105K to embed a virus in a PDF, but geez, these people prey their own, don't they? Acknowledging poverty and then zapping the Poor?

Maybe Comic Sans is more appropriate.

Opinions?

My Best,

Gary

[gwpriester]

OG RE: The Xara Xone, that was created by Arlin Bartch and Chris Dickman. I don't know if they ever copyrighted the name though.

[Gare]

OG RE: The Xara Xone, that was created by Arlin Bartch and Chris Dickman. I don't know if they ever copyrighted the name though.

Noted. However, today, registering a domain is 9/10th of the law. Anyone holding a domain that's a registered TM of someone else is just squatting. The example in post #22 is just from troll jerks who have done this to Kate and Barbara as well.

It'd be interesting to see if Arlin of Chris would want to arm-wrestle with Magix over the name, though, huh? :)

OoG-