We are now halfway though the six-week build-up before the 2019 UK General Election and this is the week that all the major political parties have published their manifestos.

In the spirit of free speech I have rounded them all up and placed them all online here using MasterPlan, so they can be simultaneously searched and direct links to any of the good, bad or contentious promises can be easily shared in online rants or pledges of allegiance.

If you choose your political parties in top trumps style then you might like to know that SNP offered the largest but fewest pages, the Brexit Party offered the fewest words, Labour offered the most pages and the Liberal Democrats the most words. But who had the highest and lowest total mentions of Brexit?

Don’t access all areas

All parties have published screen PDFs which are small enough to download but none have taken advantage of adding proper structure and navigation. The complete lack of bookmarks or an embedded table of contents in any of the Manifesto PDFs is a missed opportunity and makes them less accessible. The Green Party do score a bonus points for being the only screen PDF to at least have hyperlinks to the relevant pages in their page based table of contents.

Conservatives

Format: A 210mm square format featuring many full page images and large bold headings in Intelo sans serif font. Three columns used for the body text.
Style: The only party to feature any photography on the cover. It’s of Boris. Indeed there are eight full colour pictures of Boris in total.
File size: 4.9MB
Made with: InDesign 2020
PDF version: 1.6
Page count: 64
Word count: 21,131
Brexit mentions: 25
Windfarm shot: missing

Labour

Format: A portrait A5 format with text set in a pleasing sans serif font (Lota Grotesque Alt 3) using in double columns for easier reading.
Style: Eight completely blank pages strangely scattered throughout sometimes with page numbers which may be for note taking or perhaps to boost the page count.
File size: 4.9MB
Made with: InDesign 2020
PDF version: 1.7
Page Count: 107
Word count: 25,574
Brexit mentions: 11
Windfarm shots: p9 & p11

Liberal Democrats

Format: Neatly designed in a portrait A5 format using OpenSans font throughout. Very text heavy in places and a single column layout can make the text harder to read. I imagine.
Style: Some nicely chosen full colour full page caption-less images including some of their leader in confident poses.
File Size: 3.6 MB
Made with: InDesign CC 2019
PDF version: 1.4
Page count: 100
Word count: 28,089
Brexit mentions: 24
Windfarm shot: p38

Scottish National Party

Format: Bucking the trend with a short page extent but the largest page size in an A4 landscape style.
Style: Quite an understated affair. Only 20 pages including covers set in Foundry Sterling and just three photographs in total, although the last one, a full double page spread of the six beaming SNP candidates, makes this a collector’s edition.
File Size: 3 MB
Made with: InDesign CC 2019
PDF version: 1.6
Page count: 20
Word count: 5,322
Brexit mentions: 9

The Green Party

Format: A5 portrait with coloured tabs to indicate sections and a hyperlinked contents page.
Style: Nicely designed. Bold areas of green and slanted headings tie everything together. Double columned body text set in HelveticaNeue Condensed with plenty of bullet points for easily readable bitesize information.
File size: 5.3 MB
Made with: InDesign CC 2019
PDF version: 1.7
Page count: 92
Word count: 23,659
Placard shots: p5, p12, p28, p32, p34, p71, p82
Brexit mentions: 6

The Brexit Party

Format: The smallest offering, more of a pamphlet than a manifesto at just A6 portrait (148 x 105mm)
Style: Rather abrasive and lacking much finesse  Aside from the cover and three images of men there is little attention given to the design. Lots of monochrome, perhaps they like to see things in black and white.
File Size: 1.6 MB
Made with: InDesign CC 2019
Page count: 24
Word Count: 1,991
Brexit mentions: 13

MasterPlan is my company’s software that allows secure access, search and sharing of any publications from any website.

Ken Jones runs Circular Software. He was Technical Production Manager and Publishing Software Trainer for Penguin and Dorling Kindersley for many years and now offers software, training and advice to publishers such as Quarto Group, Bonnier Books and Pan Macmillan on how to get the best from their print and digital workflow.