pugwash
Well-Known Member
With a heavy heart I'm cancelling out of YM. As a kid in NZ I used to mow lawns for four hours to afford the copy ordered through the milkshake shop: the cruising pictures largely established my idea of the place and when I finally got here at 16 in 1959 the Old Country wasn't that different. Through all the years of bringing up four kids as a new Pom, and aching for a boat, I kept the subscription to YM going, my one luxury. When at last I managed to get afloat, ten years ago, I thought the mag was lacking its old magic but still the best one to suit my genteel interests.
Now, at the age of 66 and wearing bifocals, I can read the depth figures on a chart by torchlight, and read tide tables, and follow instructions on a packet of Mister Ben rice. But I can't read the new YM. That sans-serif type, about 8pt in size, floats across the page like mist on a cold morning. I get three or four lines into Tom Clunliffe and have to look away, blinking. Libby too, and nearly all the front end of the mag. The text is so tiny, so faint, that it's just not worth the struggle. The page of anchor comparisons in the new issue is a nightmare. And it's not just me. My wife plus a number of friends I have polled, all middle-aged but not yet elderly, have the same problem.
I have been in the writing business myself for 50 years and I know a little about attracting and keeping readers. One golden rule is that you don't make stuff hard for them. Why should you expect them to squint at your pearly words? But such is the hegemony of the art editor these days that printed text is very much harder to read rather than easier. Also, for some reason editors think their pages should look like the web. On my computer I can increase the size of the text with a couple of clicks, but not when reading YM. I note that many other media, including the Daily Telegraph, are going the same way. It's a terrible mistake. Just when the odds are stacked against them they are committing suicide by making themselves impossible to read.
I mentioned my concern about this in a letter to the editor a couple of years ago and was told nobody else had complained. Now the pages look even worse. I'd love to see a classical, elegant style that's a pleasure to read, as it was in the days of proper boats, canvas sails and direction-finding by listening to morse code from lighthouses, but it's not going to happen -- and I'm not going to pay any more for a magazine I am unable to read.
What a crying shame!
Now, at the age of 66 and wearing bifocals, I can read the depth figures on a chart by torchlight, and read tide tables, and follow instructions on a packet of Mister Ben rice. But I can't read the new YM. That sans-serif type, about 8pt in size, floats across the page like mist on a cold morning. I get three or four lines into Tom Clunliffe and have to look away, blinking. Libby too, and nearly all the front end of the mag. The text is so tiny, so faint, that it's just not worth the struggle. The page of anchor comparisons in the new issue is a nightmare. And it's not just me. My wife plus a number of friends I have polled, all middle-aged but not yet elderly, have the same problem.
I have been in the writing business myself for 50 years and I know a little about attracting and keeping readers. One golden rule is that you don't make stuff hard for them. Why should you expect them to squint at your pearly words? But such is the hegemony of the art editor these days that printed text is very much harder to read rather than easier. Also, for some reason editors think their pages should look like the web. On my computer I can increase the size of the text with a couple of clicks, but not when reading YM. I note that many other media, including the Daily Telegraph, are going the same way. It's a terrible mistake. Just when the odds are stacked against them they are committing suicide by making themselves impossible to read.
I mentioned my concern about this in a letter to the editor a couple of years ago and was told nobody else had complained. Now the pages look even worse. I'd love to see a classical, elegant style that's a pleasure to read, as it was in the days of proper boats, canvas sails and direction-finding by listening to morse code from lighthouses, but it's not going to happen -- and I'm not going to pay any more for a magazine I am unable to read.
What a crying shame!
