Planning the Project

The order form you will create in this project can be delivered in a variety of ways. Working with forms is a common technical layout challenge, which is often avoided because of a limited understanding of typographical controls. In this chapter we explore a variety of ways to create the lines, grids, and text positions necessary for the precision of forms.

Forms are here to stay, and more and more marketing efforts are geared toward capturing as much information about customers as possible. We encounter forms everywhere, when joining organizations, participating with schools, providing information online, applying for credit cards, and so on. Forms play a key role in employees' interactions with their human resources department as well, and analog or paper forms are commonly converted to electronic forms that can be downloaded, filled out, and mailed back or simply filled out dynamically on a company's FTP site.

Managing Content

You will need to determine the type of data you need to capture with your form. Perhaps the form is not for commerce but for capturing demographic information about your potential customer base. Perhaps your customer is trying to request information from you by filling out a forma form you compose and is expressly designed to capture information you need or want, such as a survey. Or perhaps you are selling something and want to passively sell by offering a form for your customers to fill out and identify what they want from your catalogue.

In addition to the information that's important to capture specific to the transaction, it's a great opportunity while you have your audience's attention to capture additional information that will be valuable to you in future marketing efforts. These will be times when you want to reach them via email, cell phone, or PDA.

Production Considerations

Typically, when we learn to type (in high school) we learn rudimentary keyboard skills. Those skills are generally geared to word processing and correspondence. This is not typesetting, which is the precise positioning of type on your page. And the precise positioning of characters is imperative with forms. All too frequently forms we create reveal spaces instead of tabs, tabs instead of indents, underlines instead of leaders, or drawn lines instead of rules or tables.

Will this form change frequently or remain fairly static for a significant length of time? Most printed forms are black and white, making them ideal for in-house production. Some projects, such as the previous chapter's catalogue, might need to be included in the binding.

Production considerations for forms are minimal. For print, black-and-white output (digital or offset) and whether it will be bound are about all the production considerations you will have to ponder. If the form will be distributed electronically, file size will play a factor. If you restrict the content to text characters and a vector logo, it will travel efficiently. With this type of distribution, you have the benefit of using color more liberally without the consequence of increased cost.

Distribution Considerations

Will the form need to arrive electronically? Yesterday I received an email from my daughter's high school with a PDF form attached for a plant sale they were having as a fundraiser. I printed it, filled it out, and sent it to school with my daughter. If they had taken it one step further, I could have filled it out electronically and sent it as an attachment back to them.

If your form will one day be distributed, filled out, and then mailed back to you electronically, plan for that eventuality now! Make sure you leave enough horizontal and vertical space in your form to add electronic fields.

Going one step further, you could place it on your web page and capture the data in a meaningful way into your company customer relationship management system. That system could then place this customer into a regular rotation of marketing events customized based on his buying patterns.

So, plan for the type of information you need to capture both for the immediate request and for future marketing efforts. Keep it simple and easy to understand. In other words, don't make it difficult or confusing for the customer to give you the information you want. Be sure to clearly identify tax and shipping/handling costs and whether a return policy is in place.