How is the broader adoption of Irish Language and accessibility obligations impacting literature design and typesetting?
Bilingual requirements
2006 was the year when I experienced the real impact of the roll-out of the recent Irish language legislation requiring the majority of State and Semi-state communications to become bilingual publications. While many of the relevant State organisations were able to previously get by with paying lip-service to the bilingual requirements there has been a noticeable tipping point in their adoption over the last twelve months.
The preference today has become to produce one combined bilingual publication. A few years ago it was more common to publish Irish language editions as separate documents. In my experience, the inventory costs of storing a large quantity of unasked-for publications is the real driver for combining the two. Under the new approach, hundreds of Irish language editions are not left sitting in storage.
Accessibility requirements
The second factor influencing literature design projects is the increasing awareness of, and adoption of, accessibility and legibility requirements. These are being adopted in a more à la carte manner — presumably because they intrude more directly into the remit of graphic designers. One common approach is to produce two separate editions of each publication. A printed edition typeset at today’s standard type size (or, more accurately, falling within the gamut of current design conventions for preferred type size parameters) and an accessible version typeset in twelve point text with the page count running about 20–30% longer. I think that the economic realities of running such double editions will result in more of the accessibility conventions migrating into the primary edition, and eventually the two merging. This would not be the worst-case scenario that some designers claim, as most established accessibility conventions align with what I understand to be good typographic practice anyway. I have had a preference for setting ranged-left sans-serif typefaces with large x-heights for years. (While I was able to specify the only hardback book that I have yet designed in Scala, I still could not bring myself to typeset that text justified.) Although I still find it difficult to get over how large twelve point type looks in practice. It is 33% larger than nine point and 20% larger than ten point. Which only shows me how ingrained my design preferences can become, based on what I have been exposed to.
Implications
Combining the bilingual and accessibility requirements, and assuming that the amount of verbiage remains consistent, there has to be an upwards pressure on page counts. The increasing use of PDF as the primary distribution mechanism helps defray large amounts of printing costs (essentially by passing some of them on to the end-user, if they choose to laser-print a hard-copy before reading.) But, in the near term, there is still going to be some form of printed edition for the majority of publications, no matter how short those print runs are. At present these regulations primarily apply to literature projects for Government and Semi-state clients, but these implications may affect a broader base of business clients eventually.
(*My Irish headline is undoubtedly ungrammatical, being an automatic online translation of two separate words out of context. Gaeilgeoirs can comment with corrections please.)
Thoughts on creating disruptive organisational transformations with design thinking.
Showing posts with label Literature Systems. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Literature Systems. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
It Is All Too Similar, And Yet It Is All Too Dissimilar...
Is your brand undergoing a period of consolidation or diversification? I have observed this organisational pattern where the approach to brand identity management follows a cycle over five to ten years: consolidation, followed by gradual drift towards diversification, then re-consolidation. It can be useful to examine where your organisation is positioned on that continuum.
The benefit of the O2 visual branding system is that it has become instantly recognisable to consumers. All you really need are some shades of dark blue and some bubbles and people will know that it is a communication from O2.* However, to achieve such a high level of recognition involves some interesting trade-offs on the marketing and design side of the equation.
As this class of strongly homogeneous and distinctive visual style is excellent at presenting the master corporate brand, it must, of consequence, be weaker at separating out individual products, services and offers. Think about it: the suite of posters for pre-pay mobile offers that you see in O2 store fronts this week are never going to be all that visually different from the preceding week’s posters for a different service offering. This implies that O2’s marketing teams are going to have to work harder coming up with the core ideas associated with promoting each of their individual products and services.
In my experience, one of the key reasons why visual brand identity systems devolve into inconsistency is that product managers (or whomever owns the organisational briefs informing the marketing department's creative briefs) are often measured by their results at the level of their products and, crucially, not at the level of overall brand performance. This implies that they have some incentive to make the creative work associated with their personal fiefdom as different from the master system as they can get away with. This is why so many design briefs begin with some variation of “...this new product/service/widget is very special and unique and really needs a design that stands part from, and above, whatever we happen to be doing over here, over there, and also over there...”
This push-and-pull between (for lack of two clearer terms) the top-down design centralisation imperative and the bottom-up design autonomy impulse from the tactical managers is a key generator of many design and branding briefs.
Hypothetically, this is how that organisational dynamic typically plays out.
Firstly, the head of Corporate Marketing looks at the collective output of the company and throws her arms up in despair. To her everything has become inconsistent, it looks more like the output of a group of companies rather than the one coherent corporate entity that she needs to communicate.
Consumer research can often reinforce her opinion. Although when brands have a strong and distinctive, yet relatively inflexible, visual system, consumer research often reveals a desire for some more diversity between the individual marketing elements. Conversely, a more varied, looser visual system usually researches as needing more consistency to help it all hang together. (Go figure.)
To resolve this inconsistent brand identity drift, a detailed brief for a new Unified Visual Style becomes the basis for a tender process. A branding or design consultancy is commissioned and produces the new visual system which then unites the design of all of the communications material to the required degree. This new identity system rationalises and coordinates the current state of the organisation’s master brand and sub-brands. It reflects the current structures of the organisation. If the brand consultants do their job, it will be forward-looking, with as much future-proofing built in as is feasible. Obviously no-one has a crystal ball. For example, how many brand guidance systems can have factored in the arrival of the new social media applications at this stage?
* Disclosure
I tend to use O2 as my example when discussing this topic, as I find that their established visual style has such high recognition that everyone knows what I am referring to. BFK has done some work for O2 in the past. However, as of this writing in 2007, I have not dealt with anyone in that organisation in more than three years.
The benefit of the O2 visual branding system is that it has become instantly recognisable to consumers. All you really need are some shades of dark blue and some bubbles and people will know that it is a communication from O2.* However, to achieve such a high level of recognition involves some interesting trade-offs on the marketing and design side of the equation.
As this class of strongly homogeneous and distinctive visual style is excellent at presenting the master corporate brand, it must, of consequence, be weaker at separating out individual products, services and offers. Think about it: the suite of posters for pre-pay mobile offers that you see in O2 store fronts this week are never going to be all that visually different from the preceding week’s posters for a different service offering. This implies that O2’s marketing teams are going to have to work harder coming up with the core ideas associated with promoting each of their individual products and services.
In my experience, one of the key reasons why visual brand identity systems devolve into inconsistency is that product managers (or whomever owns the organisational briefs informing the marketing department's creative briefs) are often measured by their results at the level of their products and, crucially, not at the level of overall brand performance. This implies that they have some incentive to make the creative work associated with their personal fiefdom as different from the master system as they can get away with. This is why so many design briefs begin with some variation of “...this new product/service/widget is very special and unique and really needs a design that stands part from, and above, whatever we happen to be doing over here, over there, and also over there...”
This push-and-pull between (for lack of two clearer terms) the top-down design centralisation imperative and the bottom-up design autonomy impulse from the tactical managers is a key generator of many design and branding briefs.
Hypothetically, this is how that organisational dynamic typically plays out.
Firstly, the head of Corporate Marketing looks at the collective output of the company and throws her arms up in despair. To her everything has become inconsistent, it looks more like the output of a group of companies rather than the one coherent corporate entity that she needs to communicate.
Consumer research can often reinforce her opinion. Although when brands have a strong and distinctive, yet relatively inflexible, visual system, consumer research often reveals a desire for some more diversity between the individual marketing elements. Conversely, a more varied, looser visual system usually researches as needing more consistency to help it all hang together. (Go figure.)
To resolve this inconsistent brand identity drift, a detailed brief for a new Unified Visual Style becomes the basis for a tender process. A branding or design consultancy is commissioned and produces the new visual system which then unites the design of all of the communications material to the required degree. This new identity system rationalises and coordinates the current state of the organisation’s master brand and sub-brands. It reflects the current structures of the organisation. If the brand consultants do their job, it will be forward-looking, with as much future-proofing built in as is feasible. Obviously no-one has a crystal ball. For example, how many brand guidance systems can have factored in the arrival of the new social media applications at this stage?
* Disclosure
I tend to use O2 as my example when discussing this topic, as I find that their established visual style has such high recognition that everyone knows what I am referring to. BFK has done some work for O2 in the past. However, as of this writing in 2007, I have not dealt with anyone in that organisation in more than three years.
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