"-I guess those banner ads aren't working"

well, they are, actually. your typeface was the first thing i considered, but 200$ is a bit more than i can spend on a school project :/

It's a beautiful typeface though!

I don't suspect that in your circumstances legibility would have too much to do with choice of typeface.

Legibility only becomes an issue in extremely adverse reading conditions, such as highway signage, very small packaging information, or bad printing conditions such as newsprint.

Otherwise, it's like saying which plays a clearer tune, the piano or the guitar?

Hey, stop blaming the font!
What would be of more use for legibility would be a "shizzolator" that rewrote text to avoid visually ambiguous/difficult words.

For instance, Clearview has the commonplace "modern/modem" problem with the "r-n" combination. A "legibilizer" would replace words containing "r-n" with alternates, eg "contemporary" or "up-to-date" for "modern". It would also vary the length of adjacent words, and prefer words with extenders over those that don't. That would be bouma-bastic, Hrant, eh?

WRBWWRM?

>> WRBWWRM?

We read best what we read most....

from Rudy and Zuzana

Not just Manhattan Daniel. Those signs have made it all the way over to Brooklyn, as well.

> We read best what we read most....
> from Rudy and Zuzana

Eric Gill said that almost 60 years before them.
And he wasn't talking about desconstruction or
post-structuralism at all

As opposed to an ascending r, there are quite a lot of examples of a decending r in Caroline scripts (as well as decending x). It actually works quite well, but getting the highway engineers to go for it would have taken another 500 years.

> The big eared, wider "r" doesn't get confused with "n"

When you have many seconds to deliberate, of course not.
But in actual reading, a difference of half of a stem (not to mention the less relevant lower half) gets very easily lost, especially when it's in the x-height region.

If you confuse deliberation with immersion, then notCaslon could be a superb book face!

hhp

But in actual reading, a difference of half of a stem (not to mention the less relevant lower half) gets very easily lost, especially when it's in the x-height region.

Prove it.

It seems to me that determining an optimal norm for the shape of a lowercase r is one of those rare things that could actually be relibaly informed by empirical study. Most reading studies try to determine too much, but if one focused solely on problems of word recognition involving different forms of the letter r, one might actually be able to draw a useful conclusion.

This is turning interesting, James why do you
consider Clearview as very readable?

I have retarded the writing of my thesis project
because of some academic issues. I am planning to
do it about Spanish Linguistics for Type Design
Improvement, mainly on the readability area for
long texts.

I have been doing some light reading on related
areas and would like to confirm my understanding
of the topic (raised mainly in suppositions) and
ask for some guidance.

Ok, as far as I understand and parting from the
Javal fndings* reading efficiency is related
mainly to the hability of the reader to predict
the sense of the text as this determines where
are the eyes going to be fixated on the next
saccades for the sake of revealing information
for comprehension. This implies a knowledge of
the language, of it

I for one think you're on the right track.

> the way a type design can improve readability is aiding the eye navigation
> trough the text by facilitating the discrimination of the shapes (bouma?) of
> the key elements for its decypheration based on the syntax and morphology
> of the language.

Yes, but at the type design level (as opposed to writing custom software to dynamically optimize live text or something), you still have to address the individual letterforms. What you can do is map the entire lexicon of Spanish and find the sequences of letters that tend to get confused most, and diverge their constituent letters in key ways. This is not an easy task. For one thing, it requires grammatical sensitivity to work really well.

BTW, don't focus on Javal's specifics too much: he was a stellar pioneer, but for that reason it was too early for him to be very exact about the details of readability.

--

BTW, one can't doubt that Clearview works very well for the intended purpose: highway signage. But to me "readability" refers most to long passages of text (like a book), and just the fact that Clearview is a sans would make it not extremely readable, even though I think it's a highly legible, handsome design.

hhp

Readability is greatly overestimated.

Such trivia is so easily dismissed simply by viewing said text through tumblers of wine. If you still can't read it, pour another glass and make something up. You have two distinct choices, drink from them, or wear them. Glasses I mean. That's what happened to me.

What a great reminder of why I always circumambulate squandering moments with tattooed Manhattoes and bearded typographers wearing skirts during my Pythagorean transmigration of the universe.

Friends, think harmonics and you think like the gods.

One reads best what one wants to read most. For me "ugly" would not one of them. But be my guest.

If you are so concerned about the r m confusion buy this. . .

http://www.lanstontype.com/Bodoni26.html

You will never be confused again. But If you are, you just know who to ask.

Hugo,

What book?

Keep the measure short, increase the leading
and many typefaces would be acceptable,
it is not just the font which determines legibility.

One reads best what one *wants* to read most.
Instruction manuals get read when the thing won't work. (Of course, it helps if it isn

The instructions should be very simply written, possibly with informative illustatrations for use. I hope a fire extinguisher has a small set of instructions.

I mean this only half-jokingly but you could add a small LED to light up the instructions when you remove the safety pin.

I should think focusing your attention on the instructive illustrations is priority number one.

I'd be burned to death trying to interpret the illustrations. Diagrams and illustrations are necessary because not everyone can read, or read the language in question, but I really can't believe that getting information from illustrations is faster than from clearly worded text. I think the world's best fire extinguisher would have brightly coloured parts and instructions that read:

Remove green pin.
Point yellow nozzle at fire.
Squeeze blue handle.

OK, I'll get back to the original topic.

A monospaced typeface would be better for a short instructional phrase.

That would remove the ambiguity that occurs in combinations like "rn=m" and "cl=d," especially in faces like Myriad, which is not a very "legible" typeface.

> why is most highway signage sanserif

Part of it is cultural, but there's also the difference between legibility and readability, in terms of the reader having time to decipher a short word in the fovea (by compiling the letters, which have to be highly decipherable in adverse conditions of weather and lighting) versus immersive reading. Sans forms are more decipherable during deliberation. And note for example that highway signage is loosely spaced, while that's anathema in a book.

BTW, one practical consideration for setting text on a fire extinguisher is that it's on a narrow cylinder, so you want a narrow font (unless you set the text along the length, which might however momentality confuse people), since you don't please having to twist the thing back-and-forth to read lines.

hhp

What we really need is type that knows when it's being read, and by whom, and can respond accordingly. If the lights are out, it will even talk to you.

We're a little bit along the way with the preferences users apply to web pages (as well as Text Zoom).

LettError's Twin font, with the selection of glyph alternates being database-driven, is another step forward.

Even without a dynamic interface, there are options, and could be more. Shania's latest album was recorded in Country, Pop, and Dance (europe only) mixes, color-coded. Many books come in large-print options. Harry Potter came with alternate adult and child covers, but the guts were the same. On-demand publishing should be able to offer readers a choice of settings. "Would you like that in Bembo or Times, or, for the really adventurous, perhaps a sans serif?"

You have a point about including a visual explanation.
But I don't get how a tag is not a Very Bad Idea...

BTW, Lego manuals have a standard warning text... in 29 languages! In six scripts!
Great source for setting comparative sample text in languages you don't know.

hhp

> its illegal to remove.

Oh, OK - that totally makes it tamper-proof! :-)
BTW, I wonder: since mattress tags can be legally removed by the consumer, does that mean fire extinguisher tags can be legally removed by somebody being burned alive? ;-)

Seriously:
Have a tag for the "freshness", sure, but the usage instructions shouldn't be so easily detachable.

hhp

Hrant, I didn't have you pegged as a Spongebob fan.

He said bouma, huhuhuhuh

Gerald: An Essay on Typography