Stay informed with free updates
Simply sign up to the Financial services myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.
Feedback’s a tricky thing. Usually, a comment like…
…wouldn’t bother us too much, but somehow it stung more when MainFT’s news editor walked over and read it out to us.
At the end of our recent article on designing the perfect sell-side note (which seems to have caused several Americans to have a meltdown), we asked for feedback and solemnly pledged to revisit the topic. So here we are.
As a reminder, here are the two designs we landed on, for equity and economic research, respectively:
Now, honestly… most of the feedback we received was quite positive, but content’s content so we went on a hater hunt.
To make the exercise even faintly structured, we’ve tried to group feedback thematically. Let’s get right into it.
As we said of our (apparently spicy) left-hand col:
There’s an argument that this is practically useful (a typical right-handed reader can hold the note in their left hand without covering the core content), though on-screen that’s irrelevant.
The practical consideration of how a document will be handled has a rich history — it’s why the conventional model of a well-laid-out book has left-hand pages with bigger margins on the left, and right-hand pages with bigger margins on the right. So, basically, we’re morally correct.
Does that mean [REDACTED] is wrong? No, because despite what anyone else may say, graphic design is about 95 per cent vibes, as is that statistic. So here’s Our Sellside Note (Southpaw Edition):
Is that better?
We honestly don’t know. Onward…
A ‘Johnson box’ sounds a little sordid. Maybe it refers to this:
Wikipedia says:
A Johnson Box is commonly found at the top of direct mail letters, containing the key message of the letter. Its purpose is to draw the reader’s attention to this key message first, and hopefully grab their attention, enticing them to read the rest of the letter
How much of a difference is there, really, between direct mail and sellside research? Answers on a leaflet.
Still, we’ll try anything to drum up business for Alphaville LLP, so here goes:
Maybe we should run it by compliance. Maybe.
Does it? Now that we look at it, maybe it isn’t drippy enough.
That’s better.
Try to get through 20 – 30 of these things in a day
hahaha yeah imagine
Anyway otherwise these ideas seem pretty bold (though we’re informed ‘bold’ actually means ‘left wing’, so maybe we’ve been using it wrong) — but the customer is always right, so let’s get cutting. Here’s how the body of our equities note will look.
Onwards…
What is “actually” supposed to mean???? Fine, wider gutters it is.
Considering we used mainly hot pink, this was a surprisingly uncontroversial area. Alphaville even heard at one of the regular soirées we attend that a team leader at a well-known US investment read our piece and — delighted to see hot pink in action — is now lobbying for its adoption. Watch this space. 👀
This is solid suggestion, and seems to be something of a hobby horse for [REDACTED], who is maintaining a useful-looking “chart markers” page on GitHub.
Consider it done:
This is an indisputably great point. YYYY-MM-DD it shall be.
How to read FT Alphaville for free.
And, finally:
After pondering this missive, we also thought “has she thought about getting a proper job?”, but then we started thinking “who is she?” and got all existential. Louise is a lovely name though, and we’re glad to have been of service.
To wrap things up…
…we don’t even know anymore, and we’re giving up. Voilà:
You may not like it, but this is what peak sellside performance looks like.
Read the full article here