Back in 1988, when I joined the new marketing team at The Mayflower Theatre, just about the first thing we did was redesign the season brochure. (It’s something new people like to do.) We hired a top local designer. Everyone thought it was beautiful. I thought it was beautiful. It was beautiful.

But when I look back, I realise just how poor it was. This was not the designer’s fault. He did as requested and created a brochure that was superb to look at. It was our fault in not understanding that a brochure should be about compelling shows, not corporate classiness.

Since then, I’ve carried out research and I’ve read research, volumes of it. I now know so much that I get called upon for advice by theatres who want to improve the effectiveness of their season brochure. The funny thing is, though, we marketing people often know less than the person in the street about the basics of a good brochure.

There may be a lot of subtle stuff going on regarding the psychology of colours and the science of eye tracking but everyone knows whether the cover made them want to pick it up and read it. Except the marketing people who already have it in their hand.

You know whether the pictures were attractive or boring, whether the headlines and straplines engaged your attention, whether the copy told a story that made you want to see the show or buy the product.

You know whether you could actually read the words. This is a good moment to stop the litany of woes and dwell on this point. To me, it is plain common sense that the text needs to be big enough and contrast enough with the background to be able to be read.

This is without the research that proves comprehension drops dramatically along with a reduction in type sizes or a change from any colour other than black on white. I don’t entirely blame the designers. They sit in front of their Apple computers which either show the letters magnified when they’re working on detail or as a block when they’re considering the overall design. I do blame the marketing people who should provide the bridge between aesthetics and commerce. The problem is, quite a few of them are young, arty and excited by avant garde designs. In these times of reduced funding, arts venues can't afford to produce print that people can't read.

You don’t have to go very far to find this surrender-to-the-designer syndrome. Look at any rack of brochures in a Tourist Information Centre. Tiny red type on a black background or white reversed out of a multi-coloured photo looks lovely, unless you want someone to actually read it. Big businesses are also guilty. The last Christmas catalogue from John Lewis was impenetrable at certain moments and the current Next Home directory requires a magnifying glass.

The good news is that, as the baby boomers get older, attitudes are changing. I find it interesting that many magazines have got the message that their customers need clear type. Take a look at Woman & Home or the Radio Times now and a year ago and see the difference. Hopefully brochures will follow their lead.