Forms

Everyone seems to hate them.  But without them, organisations wouldn’t work. And that includes our schools and colleges.

I happen to be very curious about them. As a head teacher I’ve created very many forms myself. I developed ideas about what works and what doesn’t in a form. Forms are visual communications and are part of the school’s visual culture. They should be seen positively and knowledgeably.

I believe people can enjoy filling out a well–designed form. Why? Because, with the minimum of effort they feel something useful has happened. That does sound bizarre I grant you because the overwhelming majority of forms are both laborious to fill in but also very ugly.

Which is why I was delighted to read a book entirely devoted to forms, titled unsurprisingly The Form Book. Borries Schwesinger’s 300 hundred pages analyses every single aspect of paper and digital forms.

Schwesinger identifies six reasons why forms have a negative reputation. They are often unpleasant, bureaucratic, restrictive, discriminatory, condescending and incomprehensible.

But of course, most of the book is advice on how to improve your own form creation, with plenty of examples. There’s no denying that to design an efficient and pleasant form you need to employ knowledge of page layout, typography and plain language.

Good page layout depends on using a grid structure. Without it the eye has to work too hard to impose regularity and familiarity. Below are just a few ways in which an underlying grid allows variation while retaining a familiar feel.


Below you can see a model designed by Schwesinger to show a layout with plenty of space and order.


And lastly a real–life example from the Royal Mail. We hear a great deal of criticism about this organisation but here we can see excellence. Just remember those dockets that come through your front door telling you to pick up a packet from their depot. They’re short, precise and easy to understand. Here is posting docket.



Reference:
Schwesinger, Borries, 2010, The Form Book, Thames & Hudson