Type Layout: Are You Communicating or Just Making Pretty Shapes

With additional material by Geoffrey Heard and the original foreword by advertising guru the late David Ogilvy, this is a book for anyone who has a say in what appears in print and needs to know whether, as well as looking good, it will do its job by being read.

Out of print for several years, this expanded and updated edition of the book is based on research carried out by the author in Sydney. Parts were first published in a brochure Communicating or Just Making Pretty Shapes by the Newspaper Advertising Bureau.

It created a furor in the publishing and advertising industry because while it supports some old mores, it demolishes others. As David Ogilvy says in the foreword: "Hitherto designers have had to rely on their guesses as to what works best... all too often they guess wrong. Thanks to Colin Wheildon they no longer have to guess. No guesswork here. Only facts."

Previously published as Type & Layout: How Typography and Design can Get Your Message Across or Get in the Way, by Strathmoor Press, Inc., Berkeley, California, USA. ISBN 0962489158

Colin Wheildon, son of a master printer, was aware in his quarter of a century as an editor and designer that the rules of typography were largely ancient maxims, with little documental emirical evidence. With advisors such as Prof Henry Mayer, Prof Edmund Arnold, Dr Simon Gadir, Prof David Sless, David Ogilvy and Bryce Courtney (who, when not writing bestsellers was creative director of a major advertising agency), he set out to test comprehension rather than readability or legibility. Colin Wheildon is now retired but co-operated actively in Geoffrey Heard's re-editing and updating of his book.