Eivind Bårdsen | Graphic and logo design from the Sunshine Coast

A few weeks ago, the ticket office in my home town changed the design of the cinema tickets. They had used the old design for years, and they changed the design without asking the cinema audience how a good ticket should be.

In this post I want to look at how the information is organised on the old and the new tickets and show the importance of designing for your user. Let’s take a look at the previous ticket:

The previous ticket with annotations in red

What kind of information do your users need?

In the old ticket design, information such as title, cinema room, date/time and row/seat are readily available at a glance. A person going to the cinema wants to know where to go. By looking at this ticket they know they have the ticket for the right show, and in which room and seat they are supposed to go to.

Ticket checkers want to know that the customer has the right ticket (I know this because I used to work as one). They are interested in the film title, the time and the date. Sometimes people arrive with tickets for the next or previous day, and of course their seats are taken. It is also important that the checkers can get this information with a quick glance because there are often hundreds of tickets to check. The old design features large print, which makes it easy for both customers and ticket checkers to get the information they want quickly.

On the new ticket, however, it looks as if no thought has gone into the users:

The new ticket design features small print and disorganised information

Making it difficult for your users

This design creates several difficulties for both user groups. To begin with, the small print is harder to read. Important information such as cinema room is hidden at the bottom of the ticket. There is no use knowing your seat number if you don’t know which room you need to go to.

There is a lot of white space around the title, but the condensed type is hard to read. In addition, this ticket has a grey background which doesn’t contrast well with the black type.

Another difference is that on the new ticket the cinema name is highlighted with white on black type, making this the most important piece of information in the hierarchy. On the old design, this information is made less important—as it should be.

But it’s not all bad, is it?

The new design has a few useful additions, such as end time and age restriction. However, they have removed the information about when and where the ticket was bought. This information is helpful for the ticket checkers when dealing with double bookings.

Although the old design is better, it is not perfect. The room, row and seat information could be together. I would perhaps have placed the date and time beneath the title, but these are minuscule problems compared to the new design.

The old cinema ticket (left) and the new ticket (right)

What can we learn from this?

It is clear that the company has not asked the people who actually use the ticket how it could best be designed. There are several things they should have done before deciding on the new ticket:

• Design with the user in mind. This means ask the user.
• Make sure it’s easy to find the important information.
• Write in big letters and use contrast for good readability.

What do you think? Do you have any other comments about the tickets and their design, or maybe you can share something about your tickets?

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Tromteatret is a humorous stage show in Tromsdalen, Norway written and directed by people aged 17-25 and features a cast and crew in junior high school aged 12-15. The producers asked me to design a poster for their 2008 show.

The poster is printed in a run of 400-500 and is plastered around the city of Tromsø. In addition, everyone who participates keeps a poster.

2008 markes the 20th annual show, so they wanted a birthday theme, featuring the posters from the previous years.

As I received all the posters from 1988 up to now, I noticed most of them shared a very similar layout with the name on the top and the info at the bottom. I suggested that we break the convention with a diagonal layout for the 20th show to give it some more dynamism and to be more playful. I also thought it was important that the poster was ‘on its own’ rather than just a collection of the previous posters, because it will hang on the wall of a lot of people.

The colourful background pattern resembles a birthday wrapping paper and the diagonal text has a hierarchy with size and placement. I wanted the poster to say ‘this is our legacy, and this is how cool we are in 2008′.

The title says: Tromteatret 2008, reaches 20 and moves away from home

What do you think? Let me know in the comments!

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Do you strive to achieve wowability? Do your clients strive to achieve it for their brands? Coca-Cola, Apple, Nintendo, Singapore Airlines and the bike shop close to where I live all have it. Do you?

According to Imran Syed, the author of Wowability, companies achieving it exceed expectations in one or more contact points and are more likely to be their customers’ preferred brand.

Contact points turned into wow-points

A contact point is a point where the consumer interacts with a brand. This can be functional contact points such as price, durability or technical specifications; emotional contact points such as perceived quality, service or ‘feel’ or communicational contact points such as advertising or design.

Syed argues that companies which can exceed expectations and turn their contact points into wow-points will be higher up on the consumers preference ladder. In order words, exceeding expectations leads to more sales and possibly better relationships with customers or clients. If a company barely lives up to expectations, there is no reason for the customer to stay with that brand.

There is a bike shop close to where I live. It’s not the only one of its kind in the area, and their prices are not exceptionally low. What is exceptional, however, is their customer service. It is a small shop with only two or three employees, and they seem to know everyone of their customers personally. The owner always remember which bike I bought, asks how my studies are going and asks how my girlfriend is doing. He even always remember my name—and my girlfriend’s name!

The bike shop has clearly chosen their main wow-point, and I have never even thought about going to another shop for repairs or equipment.

Choose your contact points wisely

How you position yourself in the market has everything to do which contact points you choose to excel with. If your competition focuses on price, maybe you should focus on quality or service. It is also important to find out what your customers want. Price may not be an important contact point at all for them. Sometimes, the best idea is to find new contact points that can interest the consumers. This is what Apple did when they decided to focus on industrial design in a category full of functional grey computer boxes.

The bike shop has identified that their customers want great help. Help with choosing a bike, help with repairs and help with choosing extras such as pumps and lights. The shop exceeds expectations in helping their customers. That is their position.

As a designer, you can choose between a number of contact points to turn into wow points

Do you want to be the designer who always uses the latest technology? Do you want to be the cheapest in your area? Do you want to focus on environmentally friendly design? Do you offer the best service and problem solving skills? Are you the most exclusive designer in your niche? What is your specialisation?

Do you turn design into wow-points for your clients?

Functional contact points such as technical ability and price are easy for others to match. That is why it is important to complement skills with emotional contact points. It is hard to match or copy your personality, personal style or how you communicate.

Communicate your position through design and copy

When you have chosen which contact points you want to focus on, it is important to let people know about them. A wow-point doesn’t work if no-one knows about it. Show your position through your logo, the design on your website and other branding material. Show your position in your website’s copy, in the way you write emails and blog comments and in the way you talk with your customers or clients.

Once you exceed expectations in one field, it is important to keep at it. Don’t let your wow-points turn into commodities.

What do you think? What are your wow-points? Have you ever been wowed by a brand? Please share your experiences in the comments.

Inspiration: Wowability: How to achieve it and why it matters by Imran Syed, Published by John Wiley & Sons, Singapore.

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One of the assignments in my typography class was to design a type specimen book for a typeface of our choosing. I chose Gill Sans because I like its playful shape, and because it’s the typeface I have chosen to use in my logo and headings on this website.

A type specimen book is what designers use when selecting typefaces for a job. The requirements of a good type specimen book is that it shows a variety of styles (regular, italic, light, bold, ultra bold etc.) in a variety of sizes and situations, such as text or display type. Another requirement is that it shows all the characters of the typeface, so the designer doesn’t get surprised when using, let’s say the ampersand (&), and it doesn’t seem right for the job.

This book contains 16 pages, 18×18 cm. I used a dark pink colour contrasted by a light blue to create a funky and playful look which suites this typeface. Below is a sample of the pages I created.

The cover page of the book

The alphabet in various styles and sizes

Fantastic Mr Fox by Roald Dahl

Display type from Roald Dahl's The Enormous Crocodile

Display type: Black on white and light on dark

A funky flowery asterisk pattern

My typography tutor had this to say about my work:

Gill Sans has a distinct personality which you have managed to bring out in your book. It is the perfect choice to represent Roald Dahl and your work captures both the essence of the typeface as well as the work of the author. You have created some simple dynamic patterns and you understand the use of the grid.

I rather enjoyed working on this book, and learned a lot about this specific typeface. Now I see it everywhere, just like I see Helvetica everywhere after I watched the Helvetica movie.

If you want to download the full type specimen book, it’s here.

What do you think?

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