Klaas Wynne
19 January 2009
Font geek
Tags: proposals writing fonts typefacesPosted in Tips
I’m a freak or so some people think. My problem is: I like fonts, or typefaces as I prefer to call them. You probably wonder what the hell this has to do with science. Loads, I would argue.
My main source of research funding is the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). They accept research proposals under various conditions. One of these conditions is that one’s research proposal shall not exceed six pages and the minimum font size is 10 points. And that is where it all started. I want to say as much as I can to extract as much money as I can to do the research that I think is really important. At the present time, about 10-20% of all submitted proposals gets funded depending a bit on your field. It takes about a month or two to write a good proposal. So, on average, I would have to do 10 months solid writing to get one proposal funded. Considering that I have to teach, that I am part of the departmental governing structure, meaning that I have to participate in tons of meetings and what not, there is a clear case for pulling out all the stops and doing whatever I can to get those bloody proposals funded at a rate higher than 10-20%.
To get your work funded, it has to be good, no amazing, stunning. And then, there are those extra bits that make your proposal stand out just enough to give you that extra edge… One of those bits is layout and typography. For starters, how do you remain within the six-page limit? Would you use Arial? No way! Arial, as it turns out, takes up loads of space. At the very least, you would use Times Roman, which packs much better. You might use another typeface for the headers, say, Gill sans or, if you really have to, Arial. Last year I even ditched my blasted Vista box and switched to a Mac because it displays typefaces so much better (and a few other reasons such as the program Papers). Anything to please the referees!
Follow
19 Jan 2009 17:04, Daan
Am I misinterpreting your post, or are you seriously advocating squeezing in as much information as you can in six pages at the expense of everything else? I reckon that if all your competitors heed you advice and you do not yourself, this will greatly improve your success rate as their proposals spend only a brief time between inbox and trashcan.
While ultimately the content is key, one should always consider legibility and aesthetics, even when writing a research proposal. So choosing a font should perhaps not be based on how much text you can cram onto a page, but rather on what is comfortable for the reviewer to read. The same goes for margins, font size, and any other element of typography and design.
The utter lack of design and aesthetics in presentations and written works in Science is keeping their quality at an abysmal level. Works such as the Survival Guide for Scientists do not help in improving this situation with such advice as to look for fonts and clip art on decade old floppies and CDs. And don’t even get me started on writing a book with a twenty page long table of contents.
Perhaps 2009 will bring improvement with the promise or prediction by Nancy Duarte (slide:ology) of “the rise of new visual benchmarks for solving complex communication problems,” but this will require a significant change in mentality of senior faculty members as they set the example for a new generation.
20 Jan 2009 9:23, Klaas Wynne
Yes a slight misinterpretation. Saving space by picking the right typeface means that you can put in bigger clearer headers and graphs. Still, any scientist-to-scientist presentation is going to be relatively heavy on data, equations, and references. Even though you wouldn’t want to overload your poor colleagues, that doesn’t mean you should pretend that you are pushing a lifestyle product like a Palm Pre or iPhone.
5 Jun 2009 16:24, chia
my first PhD fellowship proposal (handed in last week) was typed in Lyx, using Bitstream Charter font size 12px. i would *never* use MS Word + Times New Roman if I can help it! It just looks so awful I don’t even know why a committee would have one look at it!!!! :p
5 Jun 2009 16:38, Klaas Wynne
Hadn’t heard of Charter but it looks like you have chosen a nice chunky very readable serif. Times is overused but can be surprsingly nice. Blow it up to 150pt and you’ll see it in a new light. I’m currently using Chaparral again.