Second Draft of February Program

arclight · Post by **arclight** » February 2nd, 2006, 12:21 am

I have two drafts of the February program. The first one has the original color calendar image and the second has a grayscale calendar which I believe will photocopy more happily:

The text has been changed to reflect our new name and the changes to the schedule made this weekend.

Thoughts?

kbadr · Post by **kbadr** » February 2nd, 2006, 12:43 am

When I view it, the individual troupe names on the calendar are hard to read. Will it be clearer when it's printed? If not, maybe we should switch to un-stylized text for the calendar listings?

Evilpandabear · Post by **Evilpandabear** » February 2nd, 2006, 12:47 am

i like the look of B more; however, it may be difficult to read with all the back text. how does it look on a print out? the look of A is nice as it looks just like the board in the hallway, but some of the text is quite small. so it's a bit of a toss up between A and B.

will we have the budget to print out color? somehow i'm not too sure we will. so how will it look in black in white?

perhaps just using a plain calendar?

maybe using model B with no back text, would be best. boring, but easy to read.

sara farr · Post by **sara farr** » February 2nd, 2006, 2:17 am

First of all -- thank you for doing this, Bob!

I agree - your "B" pamphlet is easier to read. I also think it would be even better without the gray verticle weekday text behind the days.

Instead, the name of the weekday should be at the top of the calendar. Having the weekday at the top of the calendar is not as much "fun", but it is functional - leaving more room for program text within the date boxes.

I also think if you could format the times & teams to be indented, it might help the seperation between shows.

8pm Threefer - 1 a.m.; Foolish Mortals;
[indent here] Parallelagramophonograph
10pm Style Show - Tight; Fun Dip
11:30pm Cagematch - vs Blueballs

arclight · Post by **arclight** » February 2nd, 2006, 9:11 am

Between the color and scaling the original calendar, I thought the program was hard to read and felt color printing wasn't worth it for a program with a maximum lifespan of one month.

There really isn't any space at the top of the calendar to put the days of the week. There's a lot of info that has to go in the Friday blocks which eats the whitespace I tried to leave at the top of each block. Plus I compressed the Monday and Wednesday columns so there's no horizontal room at the top of those for the day names. I did knock 10% off the gray so the background text is a bit lighter, plus moved the Friday heading to the right so it's more in the whitespace area of the column. I've done a test printing on colored paper and the background text is a lot less obtrusive than you'd think.

The updated plain calendar version is at http://www.austinimprov.com/~apthorpe/d ... _cal2c.pdf

The problem with indenting Friday's team names is that I've had to drop font sizes a lot just to get team names to fit. The big offender is "The Knuckleball Now & Hoover's Blanket" -- adding even two spaces to that line causes it to wrap and push the Cagematch team offscreen, and we can't drop the font size any more without making it hard to read. Oddly, Parallelogramophonograph was not as big a problem as I thought it'd be once I expanded the Friday column.

The only other suggestion I have is to reduce the width of the grid lines or eliminate them completely. They don't add much information (hooray Edward Tufte!) and may be more distracting than useful.

My plan is to burn 50 copies for tonight's Tight show and if they don't suck, make more tomorrow for the weekend's shows.

Evilpandabear · Post by **Evilpandabear** » February 2nd, 2006, 9:24 am

There really isn't any space at the top of the calendar to put the days of the week.

Hmm... Instead of all the dribble in the big rectangle on the bottom, you could have "Feb Schedule for the Hideout & the Phone Number, etc."

Then you would have the room to put the days of the week up top. A Simple "M" & "W" would do for the off days.

Done & Done.

sara farr · Post by **sara farr** » February 2nd, 2006, 9:29 am

Evilpandabear wrote:
Hmm... Instead of all the dribble in the big rectangle on the bottom, you could have "Feb Schedule for the Hideout & the Phone Number, etc."

Then you would have the room to put the days of the week up top. A Simple "M" & "W" would do for the off days.

YES! Done, diddy, done, done.

arclight · Post by **arclight** » February 2nd, 2006, 9:40 am

Eliminating the "dribble" won't recover any vertical space because the calendar height is limited by the events on Sunday and Tuesday. Besides, it's important to put location and contact info on the calendar; this lets you use this as both a flyer and a program.

Evilpandabear · Post by **Evilpandabear** » February 2nd, 2006, 11:28 am

Eliminating the "dribble" won't recover any vertical space because the calendar height is limited by the events on Sunday and Tuesday.

If you replace the "dribble" with "Feb Hideout Schedule" or the title that's on top of the calendar, then you should have the vertical space. Meaning that the "title" is now inside the big rectangle. I'm not sure I understand what's wrong.

Besides, it's important to put location and contact info on the calendar; this lets you use this as both a flyer and a program.

You can still have enough room for the contact information. You really don't need the sentence about refreshments. It can be pushed into a few efficient lines:

Hideout Theatre February Schedule
617 Congress Ave Austin, TX 78701
512-300-8891 : hideouttheatre.com

BOOM

Unless, you're really trying to push the back text, which is understandable. I mean, it does look cool. I think the design is sleek, and no one else is doing this so super kudos to you; however, I don't want to sacrifice simplistic legibility for a conceptual design. Will a faded 10% make all the difference?

acrouch · Post by **acrouch** » February 2nd, 2006, 12:59 pm

I like the back text a lot. My only question is if it will copy clearly.

If it doesn't, Jay's solution sounds reasonable: Move the header to the blank space at the bottom right and condense what's already there under it. That might be a problem in some months that don't have generous blank space at the beginning or end.

arclight · Post by **arclight** » February 2nd, 2006, 1:40 pm

The first 50 on pink paper copied fine.

valetoile · Post by **valetoile** » February 2nd, 2006, 6:31 pm

I would suggest putting the grid lines over the back text days of teh week, rather than under. having the text over the lines makes it "pop" even more, and makes it compete more with the information text.

arclight · Post by **arclight** » February 3rd, 2006, 10:53 am

After taking everyone's suggestions into account and upon review of the test run last night, I've got yet another draft:

http://www.austinimprov.com/~apthorpe/d ... _cal3a.pdf

The changes are mostly in alignment and the calendar shading, plus changing the January text to promote Valentines Day. Dropping the line width made a huge difference in calendar legibility.

Onward!

andrea · Post by **andrea** » February 3rd, 2006, 11:49 am

this looks great! are there going to be some for the shows tonight?

HerrHerr · Post by **HerrHerr** » February 3rd, 2006, 12:14 pm

I like this a lot!

Two notes: I believe that Wooden Nickel is playing in the Style show on the 10th. Also, Hoover's Blanket would love to be included in the list of member troupes (though we are sketch...).

Thanks, Bob. This is so sweet!