Welcome back to Moderation 101! This section is all about the copy on the design as well as the purpose and meaning behind the design. Let’s dive right in.
1.) Readability:
It’s very important for a customer to be able to understand the design as soon as they see it while scrolling. If a design doesn’t catch their attention or if they don’t immediately “get it”, they’re unlikely to take time to figure it out. Being able to easily read the text on a small thumbnail while browsing the site plays a key role in whether a customer pauses to explore a design or simply scrolls past it.
When moderators spot a design with overly small text, they’ll question if it’s the best way to present the message or if the text is even necessary. This is especially important when the hard-to-read text adds a cheeky or edgy punchline, as customers may not catch it while browsing, which could lead to surprise (or disappointment) when they see it in person.
Other factors that are likely to make moderators question a design are:
- How does the colour affect the readability of the copy? (e.g. a yellow font on a white background is unlikely to get past a moderator)
- How do the flourishes (the calligraphy/lettering loops) affect the readability of the copy? This especially applies to hand drawn calligraphy.
- How does the weight of the font affect the readability of copy? Does it blend into the background? Would it benefit from a box around it to highlight its presence? Could it be bolded?
2.) Font
Fonts can make or break a design – you can spend ages working on a stunning illustration, but if you pick the wrong font for the caption, it can throw the whole design off. It is really important to get 3 things right when it comes to font:
- Originality: very commonly used fonts (e.g. Times New Roman, Arial, Helvetica…) will often make a design feel more amateur to a customer (and to a moderator). Because these fonts are so easily accessible, they make it look like less effort went into a design – the last thing we want is for a customer to think “I could have done that myself.”
- Balance: we covered this in Moderation 101: Part 2. The font style has to work with the illustration style for the whole design to look cohesive. For example, if you have a very cute, bubbly illustration with lots of rounded shapes, a font that has sharp, 90° angle corners is likely to look out of place. Ensuring the different elements of the design don’t look disjointed ensures a visually cohesive design that is likely to appeal to more customers.
- Readability (covered above)
3.) Interpretation
Can we clearly see how this design is a greeting card? Sometimes we will question a design based on it looking more like a meme or a print than a greeting card. When we’re evaluating a design, in order to merchandise it properly and help customers find it, we need to truly know what purpose it’s fulfilling as a greeting card. This doesn’t mean every birthday card needs to have the word “birthday” on it or reference ageing, but we need to be able to identify a situation/occasion and a relationship between sender and recipient that makes it impactful as a greeting card. Some cards won’t reference an occasion–usually the more arty designs–but they are still impactful because we can identify a specific audience that they appeal to.
4.) Commerciality
Unlike Interpretation, when we question the Commerciality of a design, we usually understand why the design is a greeting card, but we question whether it is an effective or impactful greeting card altogether. In other words, we see what you’re trying to do, but we don’t think it works effectively. When it comes to funny designs, we usually understand the joke, but we don’t think it’s very funny; when it comes to heartfelt designs, we don’t feel like they pull on the heartstrings enough; when it comes to arty or design led cards, we might think they look too basic or amateur.
When we moderate, we don’t just think of the design in question, we also have to consider what other designs it’s likely to sit beside on the website when customers scroll through to find their perfect card. As a result, we need to consider whether the card would add to the catalogue, bringing newness and standing out, or whether it would be outshined and missed amongst the rest.
Especially when it comes to simple designs or designs that rely on greeting card cliches (e.g. popular puns, otters holding hands…), it’s not likely for a new design to be original, which means it needs to feel sufficiently different from existing ones to be considered for the catalogue. Otherwise, we just end up overwhelming our customers with too many choices of slightly different designs.
On the other hand, designs that are hyperspecific are also called into question during moderation due to their nicheness and unlikely commercial potential. Sometimes we find ourselves moderating cards that feel like they’re in-jokes that might make sense to the Creator but aren’t part of the wider public lived experience.
Commerciality and Interpretation are elements that can be questioned due to the subjectivity of the moderator–we all have a different sense of humour and different design preferences which means we’re all biased in one way or another. Consequently, we constantly lean on each other as moderators, asking opinions from the wider thortful team to ensure cultural and generational perspectives.
5.) Appropriateness
Is the subject of the greeting card inappropriate? Similar to Political bias in Moderation 101: Part 1, we won’t approve cards with subjects that have cruel intentions or reference very human or sensitive matters. We consider these on a case by case basis, often involving our Brand Team because of the impact your designs have on the thortful brand. On some touchy topics, after evaluation, we’re happy to take the risk and let customers decide whether it’s content they want to see or not, and other designs we feel glorify the wrong people or bring attention to topics that don’t align with thortful’s brand and customers.
And that’s a wrap! This 3-part moderation blog series has hopefully helped shed some light as to how our moderators consider and evaluate every design that is submitted in order to decide whether to add it to our ever growing catalogue.
We will be releasing a BONUS blog that compiles all the different elements mentioned throughout the series into a handy cheat sheet that you can use to pre-moderate your designs before uploading them.
Happy creating!
Team thortful
