Articles: notepads

A printed pad is almost always filled in on the move. At a counter, in a consulting room, between one patient and the next, with a pen and no thought spared for the layout. A good design is the one nobody notices, because everything sits where the hand looks for it.

Room for what is written by hand

The commonest mistake is sizing the fields for typed text. Handwriting takes noticeably more space, and people write in very different ways. Leave more room than seems necessary, especially for names, addresses and extra remarks.

• Generous fields - better to leave spare room than to squeeze notes into a margin.
• Guide lines - a faint rule or a pale grid keeps the writing straight.
• The order of questions - the same order in which you talk to a patient or a customer.
• A fixed heading - name, address and phone number always in the same place.
• One layout throughout - every sheet in the pad is identical, so the fields have to work for every entry.

What stays with you

The second question is what remains once the form is filled in. A pad is a plain block of sheets, without carbonless paper, so a copy will not appear by itself - either two sheets get filled in, or a photo of the completed form does the job. Leave room for a date and a signature as well; added in a corner afterwards, they look like an afterthought. Keep the lettering large enough to be read without glasses, and put short instructions on the reverse rather than crowding the front. If the pad reaches people alongside other materials, use the same colours as the rest of your printed pieces.

Before ordering a full run, print a single sheet and fill it in exactly as you would on an ordinary day. A few minutes at a desk reveal more than a long look at the design on screen.