Vent: Graphic designer friend told me my 'pretty' invoice was unreadable

Last week my friend Jen, who does branding for a living, saw one of my company invoices. I spent two hours picking fonts and matching colors to my logo. She just looked at it and said 'Nora, I can't find the amount due without hunting for it.' And she was right. The total was in this tiny script font buried at the bottom. She showed me how people scan invoices in like 3 seconds and if the price isn't the first thing you see it's basically a failure. Hit different because I always thought more effort meant better design. But she said good design is about making the important thing obvious, not making everything look fancy. Has anyone else had a designer friend call out something you thought looked great but was actually useless?

2 comments

2 Comments

logansullivan8d ago

My buddy who does web stuff took one look at my truck wrap and said nobody could read the phone number. Turns out he was right, the numbers were basically invisible unless you were standing right next to it. Kinda stung but now I just put my number in big white letters on a dark background and it works way better.

robert_bennett298d ago

Man that "basically invisible" part hits home. My buddy spent good money on a sign for his food truck, fancy字体 and all, and nobody could even tell what they sold until they walked right up to it. He switched to plain bold letters on a bright yellow background and suddenly people were lining up.