On January 31, Lisa Falk wrote:
>I want to put together a small "exhibit" about label design and readibility
>factors to use at workshops I do with teachers who want to create exhibits in
>their schools. Unfortunately, all my files on this subject are either in
>storage or sitting in some file cabinent back at SI. Does anyone have any
>references available or anything they can e-mail that discusses issues of font
>style, font size, color, contrast, layout etc?
There are lots of articles on this subject, as you well know, but the most
recent one I've read was in CURATOR v 36 n 2 1993, called "What Makes
Museum Labels Legible," by Lisa Wolfe and Jeff Smith from the Metropolitan
Museum of Art. It's a research study on all sorts of legibility issues,
from type size to lighting. Apparently the Met is developing a manual on
this subject. Maybe by now it's finished.
However, more interesting to me was Marlene Chambers' (Denver Art Museum)
response to this article (Curator, v36 n3 1993), "After Legibility, What?"
This short essay should be required reading for anyone interested in museum
label writing. Her statement, "What is the point of legibility if the
messages we read prove to be a waste of time?" sums up the essay nicely. I
think that sometimes we expend more effort thinking our visitors' responses
to labels more in physical rather than intellectual and affective terms.
As an evaluator, I advocate deciding what you want to say, printing out a
mockup label and trying it out systematically with (even a few, depending
on available time and resources) visitors. You will quickly find out how
the label communicates and,if there are problems, the testing will probably
point to some solutions. Obviously we can't test every label on every
visitor, but if there's a certain format you know you want to use, or a
particular text or object that is more important in the scheme of things,
it's well worth the time and money to get some feedback.
I hope this helps.
Britt Raphling
Evaluator, Adler Planetarium
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