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Disclaimers

Bikewer

Penultimate Amazing
Bikewer
Joined
Sep 12, 2003
Messages
13,242
Location
St. Louis, Mo.
Ever try to actually read those little printed disclaimers that run underneath TV commercials?

Interesting exercise.... I was watching one yesterday where they were promoting Pop-Tarts as a healthy breakfast for your kid because they contain "real fruit".

I was just barely able to read the one-sentence disclaimer that said they contain 10 per cent fruit... One can imagine what the rest of the filler is.

More problematic are the disclaimers that run under car adverts. These are at least a paragraph long, put up in the tiniest print imaginable, and blurry as well. I've been able to make it through the first sentence of a Ford ad, and none whatever on an equally-long
Audi ad....It was so blurry as to be illegible.

I suppose most of these things are federally mandated; some bunch of bureaucrats wants to make sure we consumers are all well-informed.
FAIL.
 
Leonard Nimoy: "The following tale of alien encounters is true and by true I mean false. It's all lies, but they're entertaining lies, and in the end isn't that the real truth?

The answer is no."
 
Seconded. I watch these disclaimers in HDTV and cannot read them.
 
They are readable in the UK. This post was made using lash inserts.
 
I've noticed a lot of "terms and conditions" I've read seem deliberately hard-to-read.

Case & point: Here in New Zealand, our national post company posted out a massive survey that came with the potential of a $50,000 cash prize - all well and good. However when I got to the terms and conditions, I noticed that I'd be basically signing off all my contact details for them to on-sell to marketing companies... nice.

Now, I'm a graphic designer, and know the ins & outs of typography. The entire form was well-designed and layed out logically - however the T's & C's were all in block CAPITALS, which not only slows readers down, but makes the message actually harder to comprehend. On top of that, they'd flowed the text right across the page rather than columns - which again makes it hard to read and hard to comprehend due to the fact that the eye drops off after about one-and-a-half alphabets.

Conclusion: They knew people would "switch off" on the hard-to-read terms & conditions and blindly hawk off their personal info.
 
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