How should a professional business plan look like?

Forum|Forum|16 years ago
April 30, 2009
2 replies
14973 views

Hi,

My teacher just gave me this sample business plan. Now, the content is alright, but what about the typography? I'm not sure, I'm not really a designer, but I do get the feeling it's not as beautiful as it could be. I take it a business plan should appear serious and controlled, almost conservative, as to show investors that you won't do anything stupid with their money. Also, I remember reading somewhere that the best typography is the kind of typography that goes by unnoticed (e.g. nothing fancy) as to not divert the reader's attention from the actual content.

I don't know, what do you guys say?

Thanks!

This topic has been closed for replies.

T

Thomas Phinney

Inspiring

Well, that is a serious, conservative layout, sure. I'm assuming the red text is instructions/suggestions from the teacher, and gets replaced by black text. Is that right?

Is the purpose of the business plan to attract investors or convince a bank or something? If it was, I'd probably change the typeface selection so that it wasn't all in Times. Nothing radical, but maybe a slightly more flavorful sans serif for headings, and a serif body typeface with a tiny bit more character. Could be for example Frutiger and Baskerville. Still pretty restrained, just not identical to most of the business plans they see.

But then again, I'm the guy who jailbroke his iPhone primarily to change the UI typeface, and asked the forum admins to change the default typeface here as well. So maybe I'm a little obsessive on this sort of thing.

Cheers,

T

Ramón G Castañeda

Inspiring

Any advice to step away from Times is sound advice.

R

reddvinyleneAuthor

Known Participant

reddvinylene wrote:

"You're not really being helpful .."

In fact, he is. Regardless of whether or not your audience members are even aware of your material's typography, it WILL have a subconscious effect.

And the effect of Times or other misused or overused fonts, when seen on your material would be that it will appear bland and ordinary - and lend that blandness to your content. A different typeface helps to differentiate the content of your material! The difference doesn't have to be radical; it's amazing what subtleties the human mind can recognize.

- Herb

HerbVB wrote:
reddvinylene wrote:

"You're not really being helpful .."

In fact, he is. Regardless of whether or not your audience members are even aware of your material's typography, it WILL have a subconscious effect.

And the effect of Times or other misused or overused fonts, when seen on your material would be that it will appear bland and ordinary - and lend that blandness to your content. A different typeface helps to differentiate the content of your material! The difference doesn't have to be radical; it's amazing what subtleties the human mind can recognize.

- Herb

Well, absolutely. I find it very interesting how design affects the subconscious without us even knowing it. It was just a joke to him dissing the typefaces

But, you could also argue the opposite. I'm not, but if I were I'd probably say that using Times or Helvetica shows that I'm just like everybody else and not some large multinational corporation who takes things perhaps a bit too seriously.