Completely Reasonable Clients

The mystery of semi-bold

Clients From Hell:

Client: “Can you make the headline semi-bold?”

Me: “Semi-bold?”

Client: “Yes. Bold is too bold and unbold isn’t bold enough. I think it needs to be semi-bold.”

Me: “… I can bold every other letter.”

Client: “I don’t need to know the technical details, as long as it’s semi-bold.”

What a great post to start with. The purpose of this blog is to take some of the things that clients supposedly say on blogs such as Clients From Hell, and reveal that actually the designer or developer in question isn’t really doing their job and could probably give a bit of a hand. Your mechanic doesn’t expect you to know how the gearbox works and a train driver doesn’t expect the passengers to understand the signalling system of a major railway station.

However, when a client asks for something that actually exists (and is Completely Reasonable), I do have to wonder what the designer thought was the problem?

Anyway, let’s look at Futura, for example. One might consider Book to be normal. Some may feel that’s too heavy, and that Light is better for most cases. Weighing in higher up are Bold and Extra Bold. So what is less than bold, but not light? Well, that would be Medium.

Other fonts, including Adobe Text Pro, actually have a weight called Semibold, just to really drive the point home.

So next time your client asks for something that isn’t too bold (too hot), but isn’t just normal (too cold), try looking for medium (just right).