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You Can’t Buy My Love

Thursday, February 3, 2011

I recently enjoyed a Robert Plant concert along with a few thousand other fans. One fan in particular stood out—a young woman who frequently jumped up to shout “We love you Robert!” So passionate and persistent was her praise that you’d almost believe she was a “plant.”

It got me thinking about how fans can generate such excitement and enthusiasm. A perfect example is UpbeaT blogger Cynthia championing U of T’s sincere interest in student opinions (NSSE). Robert Plant sings, “You Can’t Buy My Love,” and you really can’t buy love like that. It derives from genuine positive experience. So when we are looking to tap into praise for the work we do, who better to consult than students who’ve had positive interactions with our programs and services?

Showcasing quotes and testimonials from satisfied users is a time-honoured promotional technique. It provides credibility and uses the language of real people. Collecting comments as you conduct your services and events is a great idea. That way when you need them, you have them. Where would you use them? The following come to mind: a brochure, a poster, an annual report, your newsletter, a testimonial on your website, a feature story about your program for the Bulletin, or a student profile.

So how do you get students to give you usable quotes for occasions like these? If you see a great comment on a program or event evaluation form, ask the student if you may use it in promotional material. Or, if a student makes an especially enthusiastic remark, say— “Wow! That sounded so good! Do you mind if I quote you?” (Be sure to get permission from the student and verify whether or not they feel comfortable having their first or full name used.)

You could create a document to capture these comments along with the date they were made and the student’s name and contact information. Or, simply note the names and contacts of enthusiastic participants. That way you may ask them for a quote if you ever need one in the future.

We feature Student Reflections on the Life website and we always appreciate suggestions for new students to profile.

~ Eva

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Battle of the fonts

Thursday, January 27, 2011

Comic Sans is a very polarizing font – people either love it or hate it.  I fall into the latter category. I find Comic Sans childish, informal and horribly overused.  Nevertheless, it amazes me how often I see this font used by people who I would otherwise consider to have good taste.

So imagine my dismay when I recently found Twitter abuzz with news that Comic Sans helps people learn.  I’ll sum it up for you: Comic Sans, and other ugly fonts (their words, not mine) require people to read things over and over again before they can comprehend them, leading to better retention of the material.  A triumph for those who love the font – yes? Not really. Let’s think about this…

We are talking about fonts that are so difficult to look at that people need to read and reread them several times. Hardly what I would call a ringing endorsement.  It is the repeated reading of the material, not the font, which is helping people learn. 

If you are designing a sign or a poster, you don’t want people to have to read the content more than once, because, well, they won’t.  If they don’t get it on the first pass they won’t come back to reread it, and you’ve lost them. Clear and legible fonts are an essential part of any communications piece, and they should be chosen with great care.

Accessibility should also be considered when choosing a font. People with learning and cognitive disabilities can have difficulty reading many funky or cursive fonts. Sans-serif fonts are preferable to serif fonts, especially if you are dealing with larger point sizes, and fonts that are extended or condensed are not recommended.

Avoid complicate or decorative fonts. Avoid "funky" fonts with irregular letter forms.

Avoid complicate or decorative fonts. Avoid "funky" fonts with irregular letter forms.

The CNIB has done research which has concluded that Arial and Verdana are the most accessible fonts (insert groan from designers everywhere). But these are simply the MOST accessible, and there are many others out there that, if used properly, are accessible and aesthetically pleasing.

One such example is the Student Life Programs & Services official font – Myriad Pro. It is a lovely sans-serif font that has been used in the material coming out of the Office of Student Life for years.  It has now been adopted as part of our Style Guide.  And, while doing research for this post, I found out that it is considered a good font for people with Dyslexia.

Myriad Pro

Myriad Pro

In the spirit of full disclosure, I must admit that Comic Sans is also considered to be a good font for people with Dyslexia.  But really, given the choice between the two, Myriad Pro wins hands down.  It’s clean and professional looking, yet not boring or stuffy and it has plenty of variations that can be used for headings or emphasis.

It may not help people learn, but the message is clear and concise.  And that’s good communication.

~Tricia

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Wipe that smile on your face …

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

What does the statement “wipe that smile on your face” mean to you?

A.    Things your parents said when you were a small child (or perhaps, still).
B.    A song by Our Lady Peace.
C.    The napkin in a cheeky branding strategy for New York based gourmet store Brooklyn Fare.
D.    All of the above.

A couple months ago, I would have answered A.  Now I obsess over C *.  Not the napkin per se, rather the brilliant simplicity of the branding strategy and design behind it.  The Brooklyn Fare approach uses four basic colours, is typography driven (one typeface) and relies on creative copy to convey its message and engage its audience.  Note — not a logo in sight!  And brand mockery occurs ….

Curiosity got the better of me.  I Googled “Brooklyn Fare brand” and compared it to a search on “Starbucks brand”.  The Brooklyn Fare brand returned 786,000 hits compared to Starbucks at 280,000.  Why?  How did a small neighborhood food shop out-Google a BIG coffee star?

There are a number of reasons why the Brooklyn Fare brand succeeds.

1.    The brand reflects a deep understanding of the audience. The snarky copy and slightly cynical tone reflect and embrace a typical Brooklyn mind set.
2.    The brand keeps a promise.  It is honest and transparent: “Honestly, some of our cheese stinks.”
3.    The brand connects on emotional level.  Something will make you smile.
4.    The brand is long term and sustainable, not a short term solution.
5.    The brand is values-based.  Quality products and a focused customer experience.  All bags are recyclable.
6.    The brand has a unified design.  There is visual consistency (colour and typography) across different functional parts (the market, the kitchen, the café etc) making the whole bigger than the sum of it’s parts.

* If you have read this far, you get to know why I am obsessing and why the heck I am writing about a New York food shop.  Student Life is rethinking its identity (we already have the colours) and it is good to understand the success of others.  Stay tuned for updates …

Cheryl

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Let me be clear

Thursday, January 13, 2011

A few years ago, while working as a learning skills counsellor, a student proudly proffered a page he felt was almost done. I don’t remember the actual content, but this wouldn’t have been far off:

The actualization and reification of Bertrand’s panoptical schemata have resulted in pervasive phenomenological misconceptions.

The student had used words he’d had to look up, words that he was sure would impress his professor, but words that he had rendered close to meaningless. Even though I made this up, it illustrates three things that were chronic in the student’s paper: use of unnecessary big words, use of meaningless words, and use of too many words. This student had misunderstood his audience.

Sometimes, when we think we’re writing for a specific audience, we’re actually writing in a way that we think will impress them, but it’s actually kind of alienating them.

More than anything, writing should be clear. If you can be clear, you are most of the way to reaching your audience. Using big words, jargon or clichés distances you from the reader, and kills clarity.

In his classic essay, “Politics and the English Language”, George Orwell proposes six rules to ward off bad writing:

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print. When we use clichéd metaphors, he says, we get sloppy and stop thinking about the meaning of what we are writing.

2. Never use a long word where a short one will do. Always choose “thing” over “phenomenon”.

3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out. This is one I work at all the time. When copy editing, my first question is always, “What words can go?”

4. Never use the passive where you can use the active. Watch for sentences with conjugations of “to be”, such as, “The ball was thrown by the boy.” They create a sense that nothing actually happens. I have to say that I’m not so absolute on this one. The occasional passive sentence can mix up the tone of a piece, and keep the reader interested.

5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent. Similar to the second point – it might make you feel important that you can use a fancy word, but it usually obscures the truth of what you’re trying to get across.

6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous. Honestly, I’m a little confused by this, but I take it to mean that you shouldn’t slavishly follow these rules if it means you’ll be less clear.

Indeed, I believe that all rules are meant to be broken (okay that’s a cliché – but it’s not a tired metaphor!), so these rules don’t have to be followed in every sentence you ever write. They are however, great guidelines when taking a critical look at your own work.

~Chris

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Sustainable resolutions

Friday, January 7, 2011

This year I resolve to drop 20 pounds, start a new personal blog and find more ways to conserve paper.  Sound weird?  Green resolutions aren’t weird.  If anything, my green resolution is the only one of the three that actually helps the world around me (although my personal blog may land me a Nobel Peace Prize one day).  It can be something simple, like making sure paper ends up in the recycling bin, or something more extravagant, like installing solar panels – your green resolution can be whatever you want it to be!

Green resolutions can also be made in the workplace, either by individuals or by groups.  As student life professionals, we are responsible for the creation of about three bajillion pieces of paper on an annual basis (my estimate may not be terribly accurate, but you get the idea).  As a result, goals set around paper conservation might be a good start in creating some green resolutions for you and your co-workers.  You may wish to consider setting your default print settings to duplex, saving scrap paper for making notes, having people share meeting agendas, and buying FSC-certified paper – just to suggest a few.  Just remember that paper conservation works best when everyone’s on-board so call your group together, make some green resolutions, and share with one another.

This year, the Office of Student Life joined the Green Ambassadors Program, a pilot program launched by the U of T Sustainability Office designed to bring together staff from across the institution to share ideas and inspire grassroots change within their own departments.  Creating some green resolutions is one of the first activities that we will be doing together as part of the program.  Throughout the year, we’ll be exploring ways to reduce our impact on the environment by making changes to how we think about paper, lighting, waste, food, transportation, and so on.  I’ll be sure to keep you posted on what we’re up to!

As an item worthy of mention, it is predicted that this is the year that Earth’s population will reach 7 billion people.  As the video below mentions, 5% of us consume 23% of the world’s energy.  As part of that 5%, it is imperative that we think about making some changes – green resolutions are a good start…

~Josh

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Writing without an entourage

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

When you read a book, do you ever notice The Acknowledgements? Some go on forever thanking the editors, researchers, celebrity friends, and family members who made it all possible.

Most of us write alone at our computers, grateful for a little help from thesaurus.com. The first draft often goes pretty smoothly—it’s the fine tuning that takes the time, especially when we don’t have an editorial entourage of our own.

Here are some tried and true basics to help you polish your prose to its shiny best:

Read it loud, read it proud
Read your work aloud. Even better, have someone read it to you. Listen to the rhythm of the language and pay attention to awkward areas that may signal a need for smoother transitions.

Find a friend
Ask for feedback. Sharing the editing hat with a colleague can be a valuable learning experience. Once you’ve developed an editing rapport, you may find yourself encouraging your partner to be more ruthless with your writing.

Hit the pause button
Putting your piece aside for at least a day and going back to it later will help you to see it more objectively. Waiting a week or longer is even better.

Take advantage of technology
With a problematic paragraph, copy and paste it two or three times, then play with the variations. When you go back later, one of the versions usually jumps out at you as the best.

Divide and conquer
Editing and proofreading more than a few pages can be daunting. It helps to do it in stages, fixing one problem at a time.

  • Start with the big picture and save the details for later. For example, is your piece clearly organized, do your ideas flow smoothly throughout, and are the language and tone suited to your audience?
  • Eliminate unnecessary words. This may require several passes.
  • Change passive verbs to active ones whenever it makes sense.
  • Hunt down and fix:
    - common spelling errors and word confusions such as “complement” versus “compliment” and “its” versus “it’s”
    - word processing problems such as left-out and doubled words, broken paragraphs, and spacing issues
    - problems with subject/verb agreement, pronoun references and parallel construction
  • Review stylistic elements such as headers, fonts, and bullets for consistency.
  • Ensure correct usage such as spelling of proper names, titles and common terms such as U of T over UofT. (We have a Style Guide for that.)
  • Check all addresses, phone numbers, URLs and other facts.
  • Verify any page numbers and tables of contents at the very end.

This is just the tip of the iceberg, of course—many books and blogs are devoted to the topic. If you have suggestions of your own, we’d love to hear them. Simply submit a “Comment” below.

~ Eva

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I don’t want to read more

Thursday, December 2, 2010

Many people think that web accessibility is the territory of the developers and programmers, and that the average user of a content management system has very little control. In fact, some of the more frustrating problems with web accessibility fall solely in the hands of those developing the content.  Take, for example, the infamous “read more” or “click here” links found on many websites.

Think about how you would read a web page.  Chances are, you are not going to read the whole thing from top to bottom – you are going to scan it, and you are going to be looking for links which are usually distinguishable from the rest of the text by an underline or colour change.   If one of those links will take you to the information you are looking for, you will likely click on it right away and not even fully read the rest of the page.

An individual using a screen reader to browse a website does the same thing.  They can ask for a list of all the links on a page to be read to them.  If all of the links on your site are “read more” or “click here”, here is the list they get:

1. Click here
2. Read more
3. Click here
4. Read more

Pretty useless, right?  Without the surrounding text, the meaning of the link is lost.

For the content on your web pages to be completely accessible for a screen reader, the link needs to make sense out of context and provide information about the destination.  A better alternative to the above would be:

1. Information for new students
2. Configure your UTORmail account
3. Check your student account
4. Sessional dates and deadlines

Don’t get too carried away, though.   A link that reads: “A workshop to help you learn how to create better links on your website” may be a bit of overkill.  You do not need to reveal every detail about the destination page in your link, just enough information so that the user knows what’s coming.  In this case, “create better links” would be a better option.

But there’s more to it than just accessibility.  Links are scannable, in other words, they are the first words or phrases that come to the attention of the reader.  Do you really want those words to be “read more”?  Links are a call to action. They compel the reader to click on them because the destination page will bring them joy.  There is no joy in “click here”.

~Tricia

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A Tale of Colour

Thursday, November 25, 2010

Once upon a time there were three little kids who liked to colour.  One kid revealed an impressionist sky in just a few blue squiggles.  Another kid drew a thin brown line and said “tree”.  The last little kid released the sun in one agitated yellow scrawl.

These kids never stopped colouring.

One grew up and created a famous turquoise box bringing untold joy to the traditional romantics among us.  The second kid kept drawing colorful lines.  Before long, thirteen of those lines made up the colour standard and journey map for the London Underground, a complex transit system that guides 4 million travelers each day.  The last kid, thought to be the most talented of them all, grew up and went to work for a Canadian design firm.  This kid created the colour palette for the student experience at the University of Toronto.

I am pleased to introduce the new Student Life colour palette:

Malcolm’s Red
Limlicious
Enchanted Moss
Smarty Blue
Creamsicle Pop
Naylors Navy*

*Pantone 655 is the official blue of the University of Toronto and was invented by U of T’s Strategic Communications, not the kid.

A big thank you to all the grown ups in Student Life and the one courageous Equity Officer who helped name the colours.

Cheryl

P.S. The Real Story
The student experience colour palette was introduced by way of a redeveloped Viewbook in the fall of 2009. The full color palette (yes, there are more colours) introduced a consistent visual identity and standard for the student experience across major tri-campus communications initiatives.  The colour palette was developed by the design firm, Kaldor and can be found in print: the Viewbooks and Intuit, The Guide to Student Life at the University of Toronto (PDF) and, online:  Discover U of T, Apply to U of T, Start at U of T, Life at U of T and Graduation and Beyond.

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Don’t refudiate consistency!

Thursday, November 18, 2010

Is there no controversy too marginal for Sarah Palin to wade into? Her presence on the American political landscape took an odd turn when she took to Twitter and introduced the world to a brand new word: refudiate.

The content of the tweet itself was contentious enough, but to use a word that is not in the dictionary, well, that brought a whole different type of criticism. The web caught fire. Purists couldn’t believe it. Palin fans flocked to her defence. She defended herself – by arguing that language evolves. Of course, she had to go and compare herself to Shakespeare. But, well, she’s kind of right. In fact, the New Oxford American Dictionary went so far as to name “refudiate” as its Word of the Year.

It’s fascinating to me how passionate people get about what we often refer to as “proper English.” People of good will and otherwise calm demeanour can lose their minds on topics so seemingly trivial as the Oxford comma or the correct spelling of “license” (licence?). I must count myself among those people.

Most of us, especially those that work in communications, feel that the way we learned to speak and write is the right way. To be challenged on that not only affects how we communicate, but goes to the core of how we believe communication should be done. It’s almost as much about identity as it is about communication.

So, I may feel it is ridiculous and pretentious whenever we capitalize the word “university” when referring specifically to U of T, but others don’t feel that way. Others will point out that by capitalizing, we distinguish that we are talking about U of T specifically, rather than university in general.

Language matters. And using language that people understand is very, very important. So while I agree with Sarah Palin that language evolves, I can’t agree that everyone can just make words up, and then expect everyone else to accept them.

Language does indeed live, breathe and evolve. New words are being created every day. But if you’re communicating to a broader audience, you need standards to ensure consistency. Because when you aren’t consistent, you lack credibility. That’s what style guides are for.

When we were developing the style guide for Student Life writing, I couldn’t believe how passionately I defended some of my positions. Some of those arguments went my way, others did not (that capitalization thing!). I guess when you work in a field where language is so central to what you do, these things can become particularly heated.

I don’t believe that such a thing as “proper English” exists. What communicators do need, though, is an agreed-upon set of rules that will resolve thorny language questions so that we don’t get bogged down every time we have a question or disagreement about spelling, grammar or usage. It’s the stylish thing to do.

~ Chris

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SpeakVolumes

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Welcome to SpeakVolumes, a brand new blog brought to you by a crew of energetic student life professionals at the University of Toronto.  We intend this blog to be an avenue by which we may share best practices around accessible communications and programming; effective and innovative design; audience- and time-specific writing; and sustainable green-mindedness.  Oh yeah, and we hope to discuss these issues while throwing in a bit of levity – you know, some humour, some pinache, some je ne sais quoi…

So why SpeakVolumes?  Why not The Blog About Accessibility, Communications, Design, Sustainability and Writing with Some Levity Thrown In for Good Measure?  Well, first of all, the former has a shorter URL.  But more importantly, SpeakVolumes discusses (speak) a lot (volumes) about various aspects of communication (speak) – including how to say things succinctly (volumes), how to engage the audience (speak), and how to ensure the environmental impact of our efforts is well-managed (volumes).  See what I did there?  Neat, eh?

For me, the notion of speaking volumes brings to mind a short, powerful statement that is delivered with moving charisma and passion.  For instance, the idea of personal involvement in the process of bringing about positive change on a local and global level is a very powerful idea.  Be the change is a very powerful statement about a very powerful idea.  Often, you do not need as many words as you think you do to deliver the message you wish to convey.  Brevity is good (another powerful statement, by yours truly).

With that in mind, I leave you with a video of short, powerful statements.

~ Josh

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