I'm talking about font size!
Yes, it matters of course. But if I hear one more so-called 'menu design expert' say that menu fonts should be point 12 or over, then I'll scream.
The reason I'll scream is because that comment is almost always followed by 'for your older guests who don't have such good eyesight'.
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
I will admit to being 'older'. Not 'old', because old is always twenty years older than you are - no matter what your age - but not in the first flush of youth either. And I can read small type perfectly. Not because I'm superwoman, but because I have a pair of glasses hanging on the bridge of my nose.
Have these (presumably thirty year old) 'experts' forgotten that when our eyesight starts to get a little dodgy, we don't go around not being able to read anything ever again? We get glasses or contact lenses - we might even have laser surgery.
We are not stupid.
Every day we have to read things and we're not just going to give in and say "Ah. There you are, you see. I'm old now. My eyesight isn't what it was. Oh well, never mind, I suppose I just won't read anything ever again. Shame really but what can you do?"
What you can do is go and buy a pair of reading glasses. Laser surgery might be up there in the thousands but a pair of reading glasses are less than ten bucks.
Consequently, your 'older guests' probably have better eyesight than you do, thanks to their glasses or contacts.
Futhermore, the 'experts' don't take the font itself into account. For example, verdana is perfectly readable in size 8 - a lot more so than times new roman. Serif fonts are harder to read when they are a smaller size. Some fonts are hard to read at ANY size!
In fact, I was looking at a magazine this morning and I noticed that it had the smallest type I have ever seen in a magazine. If we take the logic of our 30 year old expert, it must have been a magazine for young people, yes? Not really, when you consider that the feature articles were about Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones and Bob Marley!
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