Print design checking techniques

Hey!

I have a some kind of odd question here. For last 6months I work as a web & graphic designer and my manager quite often refers to very strange way of judging my designs in terms of readability. Basically he blur his eyes and watch my design on the screen.

I learn new stuff everyday, I study at home I do courses, etc. and I also search trough the web looking for some related stuff to this, but I cannot find anything and I never heard about this also.

For me judging any design is quite simple – I refer to principles and everything what I was though in terms of typo, hierarchy, negative space, golden ration, grids, vertical rhythm and print design principles…

It would be great if few professionals or graphicriver reviewers could help me out on this.

Many thanks in advance!

Rafal.

The problem isn’t with your design, it’s with your manager. Many people do that, just zoom up the design. It’s a common way of analysing something.

I hope this helps

So what is the purpose of this exercise? It don’t show or expose any issues.

FutureSight said
So what is the purpose of this exercise? It don’t show or expose any issues.

One of the issues it does expose is readability and contrast (if you sort of squint your eyes – the same way you would squint your eyes when looking at the sun). It’s an ‘old school’ way of checking print (for potential fill in problems or low contrast issues) and it also works with web, but there are web tools that do the job for you. If you’re young, you often forget that not everyone has good eyesight like you, and what appears easy for you to read, will not be as readable to a person over the age of 40, or for a young kid just learning to read – so increasing the contrast is a good way of ensuring a more accessible and readable project.

I have never heard of this in my life! Sounds ridic, does it actually work?

CRSDesign said
I have never heard of this in my life! Sounds ridic, does it actually work?

Well this is pretty strange for me as well. You don’t have to blur or squint your eyes do judge contrast or readability. There are many but simple rules in design to follow if you want the text to be readable for people with sight problem, but our marketing materials don’t target ppl who have sight problem.

I can clearly see that this is some kind of stupid rule brought by few and already got forgotten due to the lack of any logical use to it.

So I can simply challenge him next time when he does it.

Thanks for your help anyway!

Raf.

Tamixes said

FutureSight said
So what is the purpose of this exercise? It don’t show or expose any issues.

One of the issues it does expose is readability and contrast (if you sort of squint your eyes – the same way you would squint your eyes when looking at the sun). It’s an ‘old school’ way of checking print (for potential fill in problems or low contrast issues) and it also works with web, but there are web tools that do the job for you. If you’re young, you often forget that not everyone has good eyesight like you, and what appears easy for you to read, will not be as readable to a person over the age of 40, or for a young kid just learning to read – so increasing the contrast is a good way of ensuring a more accessible and readable project.

^^ Absolutely Agree…Well Said.

Lol I do that but I’m like the only person I know who can blur his sight I don’t know if hes doing what I do, I just use some muscles inside of an eye, without squinting and if I go further with that my eyes shake like crazy (probably not good but fun to scare people off )

Never heard of that trick before, it just got natural to me. Blur and you see the design without details, just how it looks from far maybe or to check if the shapes it is making ok.