THE EYEBALLS YOU SAVE MAY JUST BE YOUR OWN!

Marketing is fun. No, I'm not talking about the act of pushing the aluminum cart down the brisk aisles of Whole Foods Market and sneaking glances over your shoulder for store personnel before popping chocolate covered pretzels from the bulk candy bin into your mouth. However, Ed will argue that I do actually enjoy going to the store. I find it thoroughly relaxing and I'd be happy to spend a few hours shopping for groceries. Clerks at the Pavilions in Burbank stop and take their coffee break with me. The Pillsbury Dough Boy waves at me from the deli case and Mama Celeste is always trying to seduce me with sangria from the liquor department before pushing frozen pizzas on me. Good times!

The marketing I’m referring to is the brand of marketing delivered to us from Madison Avenue. I’ve always thought that sitting behind a desk and dreaming up innovative catch phrases and mind-numbing product jingles would be great fun. The other day I visited the website for Volkswagen. I wanted to look at their new hard top convertible automobile. The clever marketing team gave me a chuckle as I waited for the graphic-intensive website to load. They precluded some required legal ramblings with:

“Legal copy is more fun to read if you pretend munchkins are singing it.”

So that is exactly what I did and I discovered that they are right. It was more fun. I did get an odd glance from the mailman as he entered my office just as I was doing my best Lollipop Guild impersonation on how features, options and colors were subject to change without notice.

The menu here at Acme Instant Food is intended to offer tasty meals and nibbles, albeit served up with a steaming hot side of irreverent humor. However, none of the content is really valuable to any of the prison inmates, disbarred lawyers or self-mutilating artists who actually visit my website if it isn’t presented in a manner that makes it enjoyable to read.

Susan at Farmgirl Fare recently pondered her own website’s readability factor. She realized that she made her choice of fonts based on viewing her work on her own monitor. This led her to poll her audience about which font they found easiest to read and received some valuable feedback from her readers.

I guess all that clean country livin' does a brain good because that Susan is a smart girl.

Her move led me to examine the assaulting color cacophony that is Acme Instant Food. For me, cooking is a passionately creative activity. I want Acme to represent the light and jovial approach that I take to cooking. I like the fact that my blog looks like Roger Rabbit could come busting through the background at any given moment with a loud, open-armed “Tah-dahhh”! At the same time, I want the information posted here to be legible and not trigger epileptic seizures on unsuspecting visitors.

So I’d like to ask the opinion those of you brave enough (or masochistic enough) to have read this far.

1) Is the navy blue text legible enough?

2) Is the yellow background painful to look at?

3) Is the text size adequate, or should it be larger?

4) How many martinis must you consume before you gather enough courage to visit here?

Also, I’d love it if you’d say “hello” (especially all of you non-commenting lurkers out there) and give me an idea of who my readers are. Feel free to leave any additional comments about my site that you’d care to share. Thanks for taking a moment to help out. The eyeballs that you save just may be your own!

And just for kicks, when you read the comments left by others, read them out loud using your best munchkin voice. Go ahead. Try it! Give your mailman something to talk about with his wife tonight at dinner.