Keep it Simple, Stupid

Because I am an obsessive narcissistic fuck, I have been looking at the product previews for every game that is listed as a submission for the 2011 Ennies. One thing I have noticed is that in almost every case, the graphic design of these pieces is so complex that it is actually hard to read the material. Now I am not passing judgment on the quality of the texts in any way, but it feels to me like the industry standard is going too far.

So what am I talking about? Fonts that are insanely thin, more than 3 fonts on the same page, fonts below 10 points, drop shadows on nearly everything, strokes where just a thicker font would have been a better choice, faded backgrounds that break up the text even more, way too many sidebars, way too many boxes, quote/highlight text splattered all over the place, and so on. We are even starting to see triple column layouts. Fucking hell!

I am actually capable of designing a layout at the same level of complexity as White Wolf or Evil Hat's products (both of which have really good previews on RPGnow, so you can see the layouts if you are interested). I do it for my day job. But when I started working on Synapse a long long time ago, I wrote it in the layout program, which is my most confortable writing medium, and I just made a simple ad-hoc layout until I designed something better.

Well, when I started sending out my first few copies for select people to take a look at, the response was overwhelming to keep the layout simple. People REALLY like the simplified layout that I use in my books (it is found in 80% of the comments I receive). I had actually originally designed Synapse in portrait layout because I am so used to doing print layouts. Errant was where I really hit my stride by converting to landscape. And having just converted Synapse to landscape, it now looks a TON better than before. The difference is startling.

I have put copies of my books on my iPad and they are SOOOOO much easier to read than the books that I have on there. And I am running the gamut here, from WotC to White Wolf to Savage Worlds to GURPS to LOTFP. And it is almost like, the less access to skilled layout design a book has, the easier it is to read on the digital device. Considering this is the FUTURE of reading, I would think people would care about such things.

Quick shout-out to GURPS, their layout style is the most readable because they actually choose to follow the simple path on purpose, not because they can't afford it (they can). So kudos to Steve Jackson.

I think that perhaps the reason why I haven't been able to read all the RPG PDFs that I have accumulated through disaster bundles and the roll of the years has a lot to do with the fact that they are designed for print. Maybe we need to start designing books in two different styles. Because a PDF is useless on your handheld device if you can't fucking read it.

Am I crazy? Am I getting old?

I turn 30 in May, so I am starting to doubt myself on these issues.