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And for someone who’s allergic to nuts, the ingredient
list can mean the difference between life and death.
So why in tarnation do some manufacturers make them
so hard to read? Good luck reading the ingredient lists
shown here—all full-size. |
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White out
Did
someone in the
design department
think that white type
looks elegant on a
yellow background?
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Hard (at least for some [make that all] people) to follow)
Ingredients
are listed from most to least, but you lose
that order when (usually junky) foods list
the ingredients in the ingredients. (And
you may lose your patience trying to find
the end of the brackets or parentheses.)
For example, in this label the ingredients
of the “artificial fruit punch flavor” are
tucked into the ingredients of the “fruit
punch flavored filling.” Got that?
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Heavy Metal
If you don’t catch the
light just right, you’ll never see the type
on this metallic background. (And
unless you tear the package, you can’t
read the Nutrition Facts label, which is
hidden under the folded wrapper.)
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No contrast
Why print
ingredient and nutrition
information on brown
type against a (slightly
darker) brown background?
Someone’s idea
of a vision test?
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Squinting Helps
It’s not clear which is
worse: the tiny blue type on a clear background
or the tiny blue type against the
meat-colored background.
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Condensed Soup...And Type
What makes this ingredient list
so hard to read? ALL CAPITAL LETTERS (true for almost all ingredient
lists),TOO LITTLE SPACE BETWEEN LETTERS AND LINES, CONDENSED TYPE, and lots of parentheses or
brackets (always a challenge to find where they start and stop).
The placemat in the background is lovely, but putting it under
the type doesn’t help.
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>> Back to Ingredients Secret
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