A River Runs Through It...

It’s funny how client requests regularly give me ideas for Blog posts. This edition comes from a quick ad I put together for a new industrial client. The only comment that came back after the proof was sent was he wanted it with the text “full justified.” For those who don’t speak designer, it means that the left side of the text is lined up nice and straight…AND the right side is lined up nice and straight as well.

And I did something I rarely do. I told him “no.”

I don't even feel guilty about it. What he was asking me to do would have made his ad Ugly. We've discussed Ugly on this Blog before. The Ugly that we were facing this time was the presence of a river. And not a beautiful flowing river, or even a nice winter frozen river. A text river.

A river is what happens when text is forced apart; spread out with white space between the words so that the sides line up. The river occurs when white space is above white space above white space down through the text, creating a white “river” through the middle of it.

This river is uncomfortable to read. Uncomfortable to look at. It messes up the layout. The text should flow, not the white space in between. And viewers with visual processing disorder or dyslexia can have a horrible time seeing anything BUT the river.

Let’s take a look at a paragraph that is justified and a fixed width font versus one that is left aligned and a proportional font:

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You might be wondering, “how do I prevent rivers?” I'm glad you asked! Here are some really easy ways:

• First, align your text left. Or right. I don’t care which. Just pick one that looks good for the project you’re working on. Maybe even centered.
• Do not make text columns too narrow.
• Do not put double spaces after a period. Period.
• Use proportional fonts and not fixed-width fonts.
• Do not be scared to use an occasional hyphen.

Sadly, with all of the cool things that computers and design software can do, automatically detecting rivers is not one of them. It’s up to the designer to look for and correct for it. (One trick I’ve learned to see them is to print out the text in question and look at it upside down. It might seem silly, but without the distraction of reading the words and only seeing the patterns, the rivers jump right out!) A paragraph properly set without rivers can make the difference between a piece that looks professional and one that doesn’t. 

Cheers—Kelly