Zymurgy's re-design opinion

I’m a fairly long-time member of the AHA and an avid reader of a lot of magazines, include Zymurgy.  The content is excellent.  For me though, the re-design has me struggling to easily read it (yep, I’m in my late forties and have deteriorating eyesight).  I find the font size about two points smaller than I can comfortably read after a long day and the serif typeface compounds this difficulty.  In some cases, a lack of sufficient contrast between the type and the background color or image renders the page completely unreadable- take a look at page 33 (Northern Brown ale) of the current issue in print to see what I’m talking about.

Any chance the editorial staff can throw a middle-aged homebrewer a bone and make a few changes?  Thanks much for what you do, and listening to me!

Happy New Year!

I’m in my 50s and my eyes are crap, too.  And last year I decided to go paperless,  so I’m usually reading it on my phone.  The upside is that I can enlarge a paragraph as needed for clarity.  The downside was that it used to be a real PITA paging through.  I have to commend them on recent improvements in navigation in the app.  Hopefully, they’ll be as responsive on reader-friendliness in print.  I haven’t laid hands  on one yet.  Beyond legibility,  so far I generally like the redesign with respect to both style and content.  (Miss Charlie of  course.)

I can cast a vote to carry the motion.  :wink:

I’m also north of 50 with long time, crappy, eyes.

I’m not really having any issues with the font size but there is one page in the current gadgets issue (not anywhere I get a page number right now) that is a yellow background with white text.  I turned past it the first time I got to it, thinking it was just a graphic.  I honestly could not see the text was even there.  I could only see the text if held the paper a certain way and decreased the lighting quite a bit.  It would have been much easier with black, or at least dark, text.

I don’t complain often but that page was a really terrible choice of contrasts.  YMMV - but with bifocals and the early stages of cataracts in both eyes, that page was a workout.

Thanks for listening!
Brew on!

Paul

60+ here. I read it on my iPad. As Robert said it’s easy to resize the page so no problems here.

I also am over 60 and blind as a bat without my glasses. Yet as much as I use a computer throughout the day, I still prefer a hard copy for my leisure reading.

It was not the font size that bothered me; it was the white print on yellow background that bothered me. Never took an art class but even I knew that certain colors bleed into others. One would need to outline the others with black or such to make the letters readable.

Late 40s here, also have trouble reading some of the articles with less contrast. I also prefer the hard copy over digital.

I’ll second the complaint about the Northern English Brown Ale article on page 33. That page is unreadable because of the lack of contrast. My vision isn’t that bad, but it wasn’t worth trying to decipher white letters on a yellow background. Major fail.

Unfortunately, the online edition didn’t help.

It wasn’t worthwhile to pick up the article on the next page. Sorry, Ahmahl (at least the author’s name had enough contrast to read.

If you read the thread about ADA compliance, you’ll see the editor David Carpenter respond to many of these issues.  This good; the folks at AHA know about the problems and are working on some additional changes.  I’ll still re-emphasize the font choices just because they weren’t mentioned in the other thread.  Thanks everyone who responded!

The online version of Zymurgy is about useless!!! I can’t read the any of the words since the font is so small. The Adobe platform being used for the viewer is not very user friendly and leads to a very poor consumer experience.

Resize the page. It’s not that hard.

Yep.  I’m a 67 year old who’s worn glasses for 25 years.  I have no problem reading it.

Ditto.

Well I’m not 67 just yet, but you know.

Old enough to use the phrase “ditto”  :slight_smile:

Ha!  Got me there…