When the new Release Forms Handbook was published earlier this year, it included updated versions of the release forms themselves.
Although I had a chance to provide feedback on the contents of the handbook, the new forms unfortunately weren’t shared with me prior to publication, so I wasn’t able to proofread them or provide suggestions for their appearance.
I’ve now spent some time doing this, and have forwarded that commentary to the Publications Manager in hopes that some of it might be incorporated into a future version of the forms.
I’ve also laid out a proposal for a revised design that could be used by the forms, which aims to accomplish a few goals:
- Switch typeface to a less-compressed font to make the forms easier to read. (This is particularly an issue when asking people to fill out forms at practices or events, where the lighting might not be great, folks don’t necessarily have their reading glasses to hand, and so forth.)
- Provide larger spaces for people to fill in information to ensure their handwriting is legible. (Again, this problem is made worse when people are filling out forms on a clipboard in a park rather than sitting at home at their desk.)
- Highlight the key fields so that folks who aren’t interested in the details can just fill them out in a moment or two and be done.
- Provide leeway for the forms to cover uses outside of the traditional “websites and newsletters” context for which they were originally developed, so these same forms may be used for social media, for printed chatelaine material like fliers, and other uses that emerge in the years ahead.
I’m not sure whether this proposal will be considered, but I remain optimistic!
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