The new voting booklet - fresher, more comprehensible, more balanced
On behalf of the Federal Chancellery, Wirz Brand Relations has developed a new design concept for the Federal Council’s voting guides, commonly known as «voting booklets.».
The voting booklet is sent out to around five million voters for every federal referendum, making it the publication with the highest circulation in Switzerland. The focus of the revision was to improve the reader guidance and reader-friendliness and to make the layout more modern and accessible in general. The new concept does not aim to do everything differently, but also to continue to use successfully established elements such as the distinctive red as the "brand color" of the Confederation even more consciously.
"We are of course all very aware of the importance of this central instrument of Swiss democracy. If our work can now contribute to increasing interest in and understanding of future votes, then we will have achieved an important common goal," says Thomas Städeli, CEO of Wirz Brand Relations, summarizing the significance of the project for the agency.
In addition to many details, the explanations of voting have been optimized in four key areas:
- More target group-oriented: To give every voter a quick overview, all proposals are now presented clearly and concisely on two pages at the beginning of the voting booklet, with references to the more detailed information in the explanatory notes and on the Internet.
- More reader-friendly: Starting with the cover pages, where the design and weighting of the information create a high degree of recognizability and clear orientation, a uniform, tidy layout navigates through the various templates and offers assistance for both interested and less interested readers. The newly regulated use of color sets specific accents and supports reading guidance. The typography has been optimized for readability.
- More understandable: A simple infographic toolkit was defined to explain the sometimes complicated content, providing both clear orientation and sufficient scope for the presentation of the various topics. To ensure that voters make even greater use of the multimedia information on offer, these will be given greater prominence in future.
- More balanced: One of the requirements for the redesign was to give the initiative or referendum committees the same space for their arguments as the Federal Council. The new concept follows this concern: in the "Arguments" and "In brief" sections, exactly the same amount of space is available for the pro and con arguments. Overall, it is now also easier for readers to distinguish between the information and opinion sections.
As both the number and scope of the proposals per referendum can vary greatly, the concept had to be very flexible overall. Following today's decision by the Federal Council, the voting booklet is expected to be sent out in its new form for the first time at the ballot on September 23, 2018.
