Decluttering A Layout

Carl Shank • June 21, 2023

How do you go about decluttering or revamping a busy image? The image below was a local ad for a hardware store emphasizing lawn work equipment. The type should be easy to read and the graphics and fonts used should enhance the theme of the ad. I find the original ad "clunky" and hard to decipher what is really important. Is it the hardware store? Is it the lawn equipment? Is it the emphasis on servicing the local communities for quite some time?


One major problem is using fonts that are sized incorrectly for the ad to stand out to the viewer. The remade ad uses a family of fonts, namely Avenir Next Condensed in various styles. Using the same font clarifies and highlights rather than obscures the message of the flyer. While the revamped flyer is limited to one major font style, you can generally use as many as three fonts in a publication to keep it from being cluttered. Because of the variety of font styles in the Avenir Next family, we can have both display fonts and text fonts from the same basic font family.


About those graphics. The graphics chosen to illustrate lawn equipment are scattered, not sharp and stand in contention with the companies advertised — Toro, Echo, Husqvarna and Troy-Bilt. Are we supposed to focus on the companies or the products of these companies? That is unclear. The Hostetter logo is indeed central to the ad, but the hours of operation are not emphasized. I suppose the yellow marker used is suppose to highlight those times as well as long standing service to the community.


The point in a display ad such as this one is to increase readability and invite the reader to investigate what is being offered. The revamped ad does this in a clean and clear way.

Successful Layout & Design

Font Restoration Mechanics

By Carl Shank • May 13, 2025
Font Restoration Mechanics. Let me begin by giving an example from the world of theology, my first love and profession. Many people, even many non-Christian people, know that we are saved “by faith.” But faith in what or who? Well, faith in God. But this is imprecise. It is faith in Jesus Christ the Bible tells us. But once again, this too can be mistaken as just an intellectual nod of the mind toward Jesus without a real life change or transformation. More detailed biblical discussion, with appropriate distinctions, must be made so that we don’t make “faith” a human, works-based activity we do to please God. Or some existential “experience” with no definable qualities. Digging even deeper, faith saves no one, though it is absolutely necessary for salvation. It is Jesus Christ who saves. Faith becomes an “instrument” of salvation. Theologians have been unpacking this salvation “by faith alone” for centuries. Books and “how-to” sermons have been written and preached and taught here. Do you see the tremendous amount of refinement that “faith” requires? Precise typography claims similar distinctions and refinements in letter development and typeface creation. CARE Typography has been able to restore older hand-drawn fonts from various sources to modern digital typefaces. One of those most prolific sources has been from Alphabets Old and New — For The Use of Craftsmen, With An Introductory Essay on ‘Art in the Alphabet’” by Lewis F. Day, London, 1910.There is a wealth of older fonts shown by Day, one of them being a Roman Forum font from an old Roman Forum engraving. It might be thought that to copy and paste the letters and import them into a font design program, like FontLab’s Fontographer, is simple and rather straight-forward. Not so. From a font designer’s work, the transfer from a screenshot of an old book to a clear and professional open type font (SEE my Blog on “Open Type Fonts” in “More About Fonts” March 9, 2021) takes care and lots of work. It is both tedious and time intensive. The details of such work are often overlooked. Here’s an inside look at such work.

Wide Is Beautiful

By Carl Shank • March 15, 2025
Wide Is Beautiful What makes a typeface beautiful? Aesthetically pleasing fonts or typefaces have differing qualities that make them suitable and beautiful in different contexts and uses. I have chosen six (6) wide or "extended" font faces to highlight the inherent beauty and usability of such type. The samples chosen range from well used Adobe fonts to a specialty antique wide font CARE Typography crafted from an old fashioned type book published by Frederick Nelson Phillips, Inc of New York back in 1945.
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