[LINK] Government gives thumbs down to PDF format

[Fernando Cassia]

On Mon, Dec 13, 2010 at 12:08 AM, Adrian Chadd <adrian at creative.net.au> wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 13, 2010, Fernando Cassia wrote:
>
>> Document consumers (readers) want to read information, not be
>> impressed by the graphics designer set of fonts or cool shades.
>
> Wow, I don't think you've captured the nuances of what's really going
> on there at all.

I have discussed this earlier in this thread. Someone who works in the
print industry said it was needed for his clients to see graphics in
all 2400dpi colour glory. I answered that his view is that of a niche.
And that a properly created PDF should be reflowed to whatever
resolution the viewer is using, by means of the Adobe Reade software.
(He said he created different versions of the same PDF document for
each target resolution).

Now, take, e-mail as an example. Someone might choose to use a Arial
Narrow font, with a size of 172 because his eyesight is bad, and a
yellow text over a purple background. That is fine if he considers
that "beauty".

Me? I just want to read what he is trying to tell me, in MY CHOICE of
font size, and screen size, and background colour, for that matter.

That´s why MS-Outlook templates are SO BAD and UGLY. Because it
IMPOSES the visual design of the sender into the Inbox of the
receiver.

See this thread about the uglyness of imposing MS Outlook stationery
"designs" on the readers

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/534029/an-online-resource-to-back-an-argument-for-cleaner-design

If this isn´t an example of graphics designers losing the plot and
thinking that visuals are the message, not content, then I don´t know
what it is...

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"I am working in the web dept of a large legal firm, and among other
things am responsible for maintaining a professional look for all our
email communications (over 600 pieces per year). Right now I am in a
rut. Using a lot of pressure and manipulation, a person in management
got to "art direct" a couple of HTML emails working directly with a
member of my team and I caught the design at the last moment.

Her "designs" introduced background images behind the text of the
emails along with additional, high-contrast imagery sitting behind the
title in the header. I ended up mandating a design change, however she
is very insistent on "her" design and questioning all my reasoning for
simplifying the look.

Basically she is questioning my expertise and asking for "proof" that
her design is not user friendly."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Or here:
http://ho.io/g6te

-----------
"Just because you *can* use fancy fonts and pretty pictures in your
emails doesn't mean you should force other people to do it. If you're
okay with purple Comic Sans on a pink flowery background, why not
allow them to send the default font on a white background?

I prefer to receive plain text because then I can set the default font
and text size to something that's comfortable to me. I'm not
struggling to read tiny scripty fonts (what looks okay on your Windows
screen may look tiny and blocky on my Mac screen), I don't have to
look at godawful background images and color combinations, and my
system doesn't get clogged up with 50K messages that should be 2K
messages."
-----------

It´s the *message* stupid. Likewise, and at the risk of repeating
myself, any well-done PDF should include all information as text, with
embedded bitmapped images _when needed_ (say, a photogph, a map, a
diagram) just to convey a given message.

The problem with PDF accesibility arises when people lose the scope
and decide that certain pages should have text in a certain (whatever)
color/pattern/layout and decide to include certain text content as
bitmapped renderings of a full page. Obviously that defeats the
purpose and cross-device advantages of PDF.

You might as well digitize each page as 9600dpi and compress all JPG
files into a single archive... that is ART, not a DOCUMENT to read
from. Get the difference?.

FC