Does anybody read the attribution? I’m talking about the copyright blurb you see on software boxes and product CDs. Who would want to read that? I know who wants to write it: software developers protecting their investment. But does anybody read them? If the answer is no, then why not make it small, so that the important things, like the product name, can be more easily read.

For example, I scanned 3 random software CDs I had stored in my garage. The Freehand 9 CD (left) hides the silver text along the bottom ridge. The Norton CD (middle) makes it a paragraph that looks like body text (whole left half). The PageMaker CD uses small blact text below the title. And I’ve even seen CDs where the attribution is bolder than the Norton example.

If the CD was the only CD in the box, it may go straight into the CD drive, without a glance. Just like credits at the end of a film … who reads them? Maybe 5% of people. Does it matter if the credits are well-designed? What would be the return on the design time invested … a happy client, or better informed viewers, perhaps?