Sure we have schools, places where the best commodity should be the dialogue, eventually those are the places for such a need.

I think Luc de Groot has been involved in some research on typography and dyslexia, maybe he knows something.

My first question would be: Is there a problem with reading? Maybe there isn’t?

The difficulty is separating the reading part from the comprehension part. Kevin Larson said in a recent post that he thinks the longest delay in reading is the comprehension part. My question is, how do we know when saccades are duplicated or regression occurs if this is due to inability to decipher the letterforms and words (reading) or an inability to understand what the author is trying to say. I hope Kevin can clarify what he said because I may not have gotten it right.

ChrisL

I don’t think the problem is so much what to test, so much has having good measures to test them. Stuff that seems obvious to typographers and type designers it seems is difficult to test for. So what is needed are measures in addition to reading speed, which will more readily and sharply discriminate better and worse readability. I have proposed a measure of reading comfort: how fast comprehension decreases with time. Kevin says he is proposing another new measure—I guess in the new Typo article. What is it?

Another way of improving testing besides new measures is to make better use of marginal readers, such as those learning to read, and those with reading difficulties, or ’dyslexia’, and compare these to expert readers. Here what is important is to have good theories of the learning-to-read process and of kinds of reading difficulties. That will help define good tests. The variations in good and bad type may be magnified for these marginal readers, though the relationships may be complex and not straightforward.

As to what to test, some factors that come to mind are:

1. Type size—as defined by x height. 2. Weight—percentage of black to white 3. Serifs—presence or absence. 4. Extenders—effect of various heights. 5. Leading—amount of leading at a given x-height (and influence of serifs, extenders). 6. Letter spacing—amount, evenness. 7. Measure or line length. 8. Counter size—and ratio of counter size to spacing. 9 Word spacing 10. How these factors vary with optical size.

These all interact, so you would also have to test for combinations.

During the Type & Design Education Forum at TypeCon 2006/Boston, Audrey Bennett made a presentation regarding letterforms as a potential tool for aiding readability for children with learning dissabilities (among other pertinent topics she covered).

She is trying to gain some momentum with type design industry, educational institutions and funding (grants, etc.).

You might try contacting her directly, as she is very sincere about her efforts.

Audrey Bennett
Associate Professor of Graphics
Department of Language, Literature,and Communication
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
110 8th Street
Troy, New York 12180-3590
O 518.276.8129
F 518.276.4092
bennett@rpi.edu

FYI- here is a link to an earlier version of her Powerpoint presentation at TypeCon.

> P.S. — me bad! After TypeCon I had promised to expand the Typographic Education special interest section of Typophile with presentations, summaries and contact info of the presenters (who gave permission) during Type & Design Education Forum. I do have the files to organize and upload and will keep my promise to make them available.

No excuse, but right after TypeCon I started a new full-time position and have been very busy... scarcely time to post as often as I used to.

Oh boy. Be careful what you wish for. This is Pandora’s box all over again.

Having said that...

why do we need research on reading? what are the proposed goals of reading research?

To find out whether and how design can improve the efficiency and efficacy with which readers process printed text. From a more philosophical or ideological point of view, the ultimate goal is to promote the dissemination of knowledge.

This is quite readable in my opinion, with a soft touch of clouds :
http://www.filosofico.net/filos52.htm

Kevin with a gentle mood adjustment.

hhp

> Is there a problem with reading?

Caveman #1: Grunt, I wonder if I can do something
to get to my girlfriend’s cave quicker in the mornings.
Caveman #2: Grunt, is there a problem with walking?

Caveman #1 invented shoes. Caveman #2 got removed from the gene pool.

—

Text fonts are like walking shoes: you don’t notice any flaws unless they’re really bad, but no matter how good they are they still end up hurting you if you walk long enough. There will always be ways to make fonts/shoes more comfortable for a longer duration.

hhp

Chris,

Not a problem with reading; a problem with our understanding of what makes reading happen. We want to know so we can influence the meaningful variables.

As Bill points out, the many variables interact, so it’s a very big project to try to separate them. I do think a new suite of fonts should be developed, but let’s all chant together: it should be type designers (experienced, thorough, open-minded ones), not students, brain scientists or linguists who develop them. The complexity of assembling a team of appropriate experts, asking the right questions, testing thoroughly, and finding meaningful results is a tall order. So, Paul, I would say, no, there isn’t anything even approaching exhaustive or even complete research out there. It hasn’t even been tried.

What I’d like to see is a Research Institute for the Scientific Study of Perceptual Processing in Reading, existing under the institutional umbrella of a School of Typography or Design.

The idea here would be to go beyond developing new measures of readability; or developing new proofs of readerability; or devising comparative tests that show a more sophisitcated understanding of the stimulus material used in these tests (i.e., type), though this last concern is certainly a priority. The idea here would be to develop an understanding of the perceptual and neuro-physical mechanics of reading that is detailed enough to make plain why the things that typographers and type designers know are critical or worth attending to, are indeed critical and worth attending to, like spacing.

Currently the perceptual mechanics of reading are massively under explored by students of reading and reading problems. And currently pivotal dimensions of processing (like, for instance, lateral interference) are not well integrated into the picture. A good deal is known about perceptual mechanics, neural behaviour in the multi-layered visual cortex, perceptual learning and object recognition that hasn’t been effectively applied and tested in the domain of what I call ’visual wordform resolution’. The Design / Typography School umbrella would gaurantee the data currently available is (re)viewed with eyes sensitized by typographical craft knowledge, and that the tests are designed in a way that reflects expert knowledge of the stimulus material and trenchant intuitions about their functioning in conditions of use. Eyes sensitized by typographical craft wisdom might predispose the researcher to introduce relevant but overlooked perspectives that integrate a greater range of observations and in doing this redirect the field.

So there is a benefit to the typographical community and to the field of reading research.

decipher the letterforms and words (reading) or an inability to understand what the author is trying to say

Chris, that’s a really interesting idea. William, nice list!

Here are some more possible variables

- paper & ink combinations ( how is that for exponential factors? - actually there aught to be a way of contrasting things without going too crazy )
- Serif shape
- contrast with ground/paper
- Reverse color ( white on black )

Nick had some solid ideas about this ina thread I connot seem to dig up now. Anybody else know where it is?

Ultimately though I do think that there is some purpose ( efficency if nothing else) in doing tests which are designed to see what kind of meta theory might be best at describing the mechanisms at work in reading. It seems to me that david berlow said something to the effect that whatever theory is used to desribe what happens in reading latin characters had better have some way of dealing with arabic & chinese too or it was going to be sub-standard. I tend to agree. ( ...If that’s an acceptable paraphrasing and my memory isn’t fooling me utterly that is.) I would for instance, like it very much if some of Peter’s theories could be tested.

Ultimately what I am personally curious about is if small subtle contextual variations in lettershape and spacing might be helpful. Erik Van Blockland made a typeface that varied randomly called Kosmik. Of course because Kosmic is psudorandom or even super-random in that it avoids the sameness that randomizing can produce. So.... it *is* contextual. But the contextual I am interested in is variation to be sure but based on attempting to get better Notan & letter relationship rather than variation for it’s own sake. Sometime soon I will start a thread about this again. I am assembling lots of bits & pieces at the moment! All of this is to say I would like this idea tested one day too.

But what has intrigued me most about this thread is not the pure theory or the atomization of type factors - it’s the ideas people have had about alternatives to pure speed for measuring type success. In my view, that question is probably the richest vein to be mined of all.

Luca(as) where are you?

If all you blokes put your heads together I reckon youd make a font that’s heaps better than all these cruddy ones these days. Are you up for it???

Muzz

But the contextual I am interested in is variation to be sure but based on attempting to get better Notan & letter relationship rather than variation for it’s own sake. Sometime soon I will start a thread about this again.

Or you can revive this one, if it suits your needs.

[Eben] “…measuring type success…”

It’s great to measure the success of a drug protocol.
But we need to understand why in biological terms a specific drug works and how they work in combination.

To guide intelligent action in our manipulation of typographical micro-variables we need to know how things acheive what they acheive.

This should motivate research into perceptual processing and perceptual learning.

>Is there a problem with reading? Maybe there isn’t?

That is a really good question, Chris. I think the answer is that sometimes we know there is a problem.

For example a friend of mine was talking about the requirements for grant proposals for NSF. They are required to be a single column of 10 point Times New Roman, single spaced on letter sized paper. This makes the measure way too long, and my friend was saying that it really makes ploughing through piles of grant applications a chore for the reviewers.

Another example I think are screen fonts, which in that low resolution environment are fatiguing enough that most people don’t want to read extended text—only read text in snippets.

So we know there is a range of more and less readable text. Now you can reasonably question is whether it is possible to improve on the best typefaces—such as Baskerville, Garamond, etc.—set at a size, measure and spacing we know are excellent. Maybe the limits are difficulties of comprehension, as you say, and not of perceptual processing.

Personally, I think there may be only small improvements in readability possible in typeface design, though I think these are possible. The main thing for text design about knowing scientifically what is better and worse is that it would give guidance so the new design would be at least as good as the best out there now. And maybe slightly better.

But the benefits could be great in other areas. For example if the scientific testing showed that long measures were bad, the NSF wouldn’t specify them. Forms would not have type too small or crowded. And screen manufacturers and font designers would know what realistically to shoot for.

But the fruits of research will be more marked in other areas. first of all in lay-out, if we knew how type size, based on x height, and leading relates to ideal line length, it would help avoid blunders in in newsletters, magazines, newspapers, the internet, etc. And similarly for many other variables.

In addition, there may be benefits for teaching reading and helping dyslexics—we don’t know.

Over all the justification for research into perceptual processing in reading is what Benjamin Franklin said. When asked of what use were his electrical researches—which then yielded only amusing gadgets, he said: “Of what use is a new born baby?” Of course later he invented the lightning rod, and then our whole modern economy became based on electricity. Reading research is still in the ’newborn baby’ stage, I think. But there is plenty of reason to hope for helpful results.

or example a friend of mine was talking about the requirements for grant proposals for NSF. They are required to be a single column of 10 point Times New Roman, single spaced on letter sized paper.
Is there any guideline for margins? >^P

Maybe the limits are difficulties of comprehension, as you say, and not of perceptual processing.
So for research, there should be different levels of complexity of texts for testign purposes as well? Perhaps one text that only incorporates the commonest of words and information, and then sets of texts that progress in complexity of vocabularity and concept? This may be the hardest variable to isolate?

> there may be only small improvements in readability possible in typeface design

I agree, in terms of percentage. But it is over the length of a book, or the inadequancy of lighting, etc. that this small amount can make or break things, or at the very least improve one’s life a bit. In fact it’s not really about finishing that long book an hour or two earlier, it’s about quality of life. And this is the sort of thing that tends to escape formal science, often leading its practitioners to become detached from people at large, and thus being dismissed by them. To me, a good scientist is first of all a wise person.

hhp

“In fact it’s not really about finishing that long book an hour or two earlier, it’s about quality of life.”

That is exactly it in a nut shell. I just wonder if we truly know what we are measuring. We know there are eye movements; we know the quantity and type of movement can vary. I have yet to see how this is extrapolated into a better or worse reading experience though and if so, how much better ot worse?

Line length (based on character count) has long been known to affect reading. This is not something the type designer can control, only the typesetter/user—in William’s scenario, perhaps the czar who decrees the oversized measure :-) Tinker’s testing, the testing from the Royal College, and every other one I know has shown the long line length to be a killer of reader comfort. Strange that the NSF Grants Czar does not believe in research.

I think we need 2 sets of variables to test. One set would be aimed at the design of type. The other set would be aimed at the configuration of type on a page or screen. The target in one case is a type designer and the other is a graphic designer.

ChrisL

Well we only need the former. Hey, it’s already hard
enough to get their attention - don’t give them choices! :-)

hhp

The research that I am aware of generally seems to be predicated on new typeface development, whether it is for fast reading on computer screens, or a dyslexia project. These seem able to get the funding.

But surely it would be better to test exisiting types, and to have independent researchers tackle the same problem so that we can get some proper scientific peer review.

**

Having said that (which is to say, I am all for learning more about how things work and why), I don’t believe that a physiological understanding of reading has more than a very oblique theoretical relevance to type design. Numerical method is most useful in product development and testing, ie technology, not in providing general scientific principles that will improve or validate the process of everyday typography or type design.

Where “everyday” means mainstream, commercial, etc. I agree. You don’t try to optimize type for money, that’s for sure (heck, it’s hard enough to just make type for money). And you don’t do it to please the masses (consciously). You do it because you respect the craft, and care about the user. Like Peter said (elsewhere) it’s not for everybody (and I don’t mind that one bit).

hhp

Perhaps we need to distinguish between “brute’ and ’fine’ issues. Brute issues are issues of size and leading and line length and consistency of spacing and choice of type of type that measurably affect the sustainability (with good comprehension and enjoyment) of the perceptual-attentional connection with the text. We could call these: perceptual text-navigational processing issues and develop measures for them.

Fine issues relate to adjustments or manipulations of contrast, construction, spacing that may be minor or hard to detect in perceptual text-navigational processing (base-level readability) terms but show an advantage in visual word-form resolutional terms, because they reduce superfluous spikes in the retinal and neural receptive field.
____________

For dyslexia, we need an idea of what the problem is to do product development and testing. Is the problem rooted in a perceptual processing deficit or a phonological processing deficit or both, or one as a consequence ot the other. And if the deficit is a perceptual processing one is it because of the structure of the script, an error in pedagogy or a neurological-anatomical deficit?

The discussion of perceptual processing vs cognitive understanding of text here gave me a new idea. Maybe the best way to discriminate better and worse readability is with material that is cognitively very difficult for the reader. Then changes to a worse type design or graphic design would be the ’straw that broke the camel’s back’ so to speak.

In other words, when the material is cognitively easy, the taxing character of the type or layout is will not be so easy to measure, but near the borderline, or breakdown into very slow reading or abandonment will be more evident.

What do you think Kevin?

On the contrary, we need easy material - but we also need very good testing.

Unnatural stimuli cannot yield good insights into natural processes such as immersion. When the reader is reading very slowly because the material is hard, the high-speed stuff we’re looking at understanding doesn’t not come into play. This is in fact the core problem with existing testing. But Kevin might in fact agree with you because from what I gather he doesn’t see the immersion, he sees it as one “linear” black box so to speak.

hhp

But we need to understand why in biological terms a specific drug works and how they work in combination. - Peter

I agree 100%. Which is why I am so interested in your work. In fact I think it was it my relative satisfaction with your ideas about this question which made additional perameters of success so compelling. It seemed ( perhaps falsely ) that the one thing lacking for your theories to be tested properly was a broader, richer, more detailed, and maybe more commonsensical view of what typographic success would be composed of. What would this increased quality of life, as Hrant would have it, look like? I don’t mean that this lack was your but rather ours. Chris’ & Williams’ posts clearly got me.

I may have been overly severe in my post by divorcing pure theory ( which what it seems like you have emphasized ) from hypothesis’ about how we might measure success in type. Maybe I am wrong in thinking that bringing in the variable of Comprehension clarifies things. Maybe it just adds a new variable. A new chore. What do you think?

Does your theory about perceptual and neuro-physical mechanics of reading as well as the salient feature set ( how am I doing here?) available to be processed; suggest particular a theory of salient measurement as well? In other words- what besides speed would you like to see measured? Perhaps none of the meta-measurements is relevant. Perhaps it is just mico-measurements to seek & confirm salient features that you feel we need instead.

I really do want to know.

BTW - Nice post Carl!

Nick, What do you mean by ’Numerical method ’?

Numerical method: quantitative analysis.

By the way, do you know that elementary schools are open to such testing and education?

I heard this problem some time ago, firsthand, where a teacher complained about how the existing typeface (“a Times or an Arial”, she said) hampered the readability and comprehension of her students. I supposed it has to do with sizes rather than letterform, but this is pure speculation.

She then mused about how almost every teacher in her school felt that way, and that they will benefit by having a “font advisor” come in and train them to effectively use type. Not necessarily to achieve the most aesthetically pleasing setting, but ultimately to improve the kids’ reading comprehension level.

About the ease of getting through the school board bureaucracy, she said, “some of the board members are already aware of such concern”. I didn’t know if this meant anything or not.

Is there any school teacher that care to enlighten us? Otherwise, we’ll just go straight to the school board and go from there :)

So, I’ve got a personal mystery (which might add another unnecessary dimension to this) that I’m trying to solve.

I get motion sickness pretty bad. I can’t read on any moving vehicle— I’m talking “barfy.” In the last few months I’ve realized that I can read the Washington Post Express on a train on my way to work with little discomfort.

I saw this as a victory for myself and thought that maybe I was able to read on a moving subway car if I was standing up. Yesterday I tried to read a paperback book...and, um I got “barfy.” However, I seemed to read at my normal speed perhaps even faster than usual, but I still got sick.

Why would I be able to read the Washington Post Express, without feeling sick, but not a paperback?

This had me thinking, could a typeface be made for people with motion sickness to eliminate reading discomfort? Anyway...a personal puzzle that I thought might be of use here.

> Why would I be able to read the Washington Post Express,
> without feeling sick, but not a paperback?

My guess is the larger newspaper blocked more of the (moving) background from your view. Sort of an extension of the benefit of wide margins.

> could a typeface be made for people with motion sickness

Interesting!

hhp

The idea here would be to develop an understanding of the perceptual and neuro-physical mechanics of reading that is detailed enough to make plain why the things that typographers and type designers know are critical or worth attending to, are indeed critical and worth attending to, like spacing.

That makes a lot of sense, but perhaps the question should be framed differently: one should be completely open to the possibility that “the things that typographers and type designers know are critical” may not be critical after all. It’s difficult enough to conduct good research without biases; it’s almost impossible if the researcher is bent on proving his beliefs to be true.

But what has intrigued me most about this thread is not the pure theory or the atomization of type factors - it’s the ideas people have had about alternatives to pure speed for measuring type success.

Efficiency and effectiveness (or efficacy) are different things, but I’ve been wondering how effectiveness can be measured. Surely measures of comprehension and retention have a lot more to do with the reader’s familiarity with the subject and all sorts of cognitive processes unrelated to visual processing?

I don’t believe that a physiological understanding of reading has more than a very oblique theoretical relevance to type design. Numerical method is most useful in product development and testing, ie technology, not in providing general scientific principles that will improve or validate the process of everyday typography or type design.

What method, then, would be appropriate for such an investigation? Ethnography? Wouldn’t the goal be to arrive at universal conclusions? In the end, if the goal is to produce generalizable conclusions, one cannot run from statistics and numbers.

it should be type designers (experienced, thorough, open-minded ones), not students, brain scientists or linguists who develop them.

But perhaps brain scientists and/or linguists should be allowed to test them? Type designers would certainly be better equipped to choose what factors should be isolated and tested. But scientists from other fields would perhaps be in a better position to analyse how those factors actually affect reading.

What method, then, would be appropriate for such an investigation?

I don’t believe any method would be appropriate. Some things are not susceptible to quantitative analysis. This concerns the principle of demarcation between science and pseudo science.

Nick, I agree with your point ( if I have it) that testing factors in reading, type, comprehension etc is more likely to benefit a technology company well before it will help a type design company. And even graphic designers before type designers. And ideally school kids before us too. But I am still not sure I completely get what you are saying. Are you saying that such research might have oblique relevance to type design or no relevance to type design whatsoever? The phrase ’suceptible to quantitaive analysis’ suggests a kind of binary model that seems too simple to me. It’s not a question I think of ’either’ & ’or’ so much as a question of ’also’ & ’and’.

Scientists have been studying the Stradivarius violin for decades, trying to figure out why it sounds so good and to see if modern technology can replicate the instrument design using all the modern marvels we have available. So far, they have failed.
The technology used by Stradaveri was knocking on wood—literally. He would carve a basic shape with simple hand tools and knock on the wood in various places, listening for that certain sound that his ears could recognize as “correct”. He would carve and knock, carve and knock at his slab of wood until it was right. Scans and X-rays instruments reveal that no two are alike in modulation of thickness. The assumption is that each piece of wood needed its own variation in thickness to resonate sound properly. Stradaveri used his ears and knuckles in the same way that punch cutters used their eyes and smoke tests. Tinker a bit then look then tinker some more. The human mind and senses are just incredible. Sometimes we might just have to say, in this hi-tech world, that humans have abilities which are not reproducible by machine and this is “OK”!
Should scientists close up shop? Absolutely not! But once in a graet great, it is OK to just cry “uncle”.

ChrisL

>But once in a graet great, it is OK to just cry “uncle”.

No.

All the inquiry into fonts would do is create substantiated, predictable facets to use when designing fonts. NO harm in having that in my toolbox, when I glue something together around the house, I appreciate science leading to a consistent range of dry-times based on the environment.

So much of these proposed scientific inquiries are based on legibility=speed=succes. This suggests a hunt for “the one true font”. Yuck-that explains some of the designer resistince. There are a lot of other factors we all might be intersted in. Do certian existing fonts lend themselves to increased comprehension of exact data? Of overall comprehension and recall? People often visualize words to recall spellings, dates, etc. What fonts do the mind use? Are there fonts that purposely slow down reading speed and does that have a use? Is kerning simply aesthetic, or can it alternate kerning profiles predictably change the meaning of a message?

Do people learn to write foreign laguages better in certain typefaces? Can they? Some faces are inappropriate for body text, while similar ones are great. Is there exact calculatable figure predicting where the change is?

Then there is the idea of letterforms themselves. Would a font where each letter contextually joined to the “starting spot” of the next letter help? Arrowed serifs, non-baseline oriented fonts? These all sound like wacky ideas, but without numbers to confirm that we run on gut.

There are dozens more of ideas, and new ones will spawn from research. Sounds like something for a University to have fun with. For a long time. Remember, we still down even know much about a cat’s purr.

Choz Cunningham
!Exclamachine Type Foundry
The Snark

“the one true font”

Fear of a ’one true font’ where the industry is concerned is of course poppycock. Fear of an editorial board on a magazine beleiving in it is likewise. Fear of government offices or the odd small client getting religion about a ’one true font’ & becoming a pain to work with might possibly be justified. But even there... designers have a rough time getting their clients to stick to agreed plans already! I can’t seem to worry about that ’issue’ at all. Fear of people bleating on about stuff which is just silly is something we will all just have to deal with. That’s never going to stop.

We already went through the “One true font” phase, it was called Helvetica. I don’t think that will be revisited any time soon.

ChrisL

The phrase ‘suceptible to quantitaive analysis’ suggests a kind of binary model that seems too simple to me.

I said some things are not susceptible, which doesn’t mean that there aren’t many things that may be susceptible to varying degrees.

Chris (& everyone else),

You make the point that Stradivari was a master craftsmen that achieved near-perfection not by mathematical calculations or by reading scientific treatises on violin engineering. He just “played it by ear”, quite literally.

First of all, I would remark that his method (according to you — I don’t really know anything about Stradivari) is used even in computer science. Some problems, particularly complex systems (http://typophile.com/node/28777/164470), have so many variables that they cannot be solved by means of equations — or at least not without ridiculous amounts of time and processing power. Or the variables may be known, but exactly how they interact (i.e. the equations) is not known.

In such cases, solutions may be worked out by trial and error: knock, carve, knock. For instance, when the equations used by a certain encryption method are very complex and too many variables (such as the original characters) are unknown, the computer may try to crack a password by attempting different combinations sequentially.

Another approach in computer science is to use swarms of “intelligent” agents: each agent, which in a way represents a variable in a complex system, is programmed to behave in a certain way; the agents are left to fend for themselves, and the results are recorded.

The reason, then, that almost no things human — such as reading — can be solved or controlled through “pure science” is because there are too many variables and equations, many of them unknown. What the master craftsman does is use his experience — those missing variables and equations — and the trial-and-error methodology to create solutions. This is a task that can probably never be accomplished through “pure science”, simply because all the variables and equations known by all master craftsmen (and women) will probably never be recorded and codified in a usable way.

However, the knowledge and experience of the master craftsman has limitations, in the sense that those variables and equations in his brain are specific to his culture, habits etc. While scientific research is no substitute for the master craftsman and woman, it can certainly help them make better decisions and judgements, and even try different solutions that go against their personal beliefs.

Is this more or less what you were saying?

You guys don’t understand. It’s Nick what’s not susceptible
to quantitative analysis. Or really just analysis, period.

hhp

[there are too many things to address in previous post, and I like a lot of what is said in many of them, including those of the ’new’ voices]

[Chris] 2 sets of variables to test

Eric I am suggesting approaching the field with my type-craft-generated attunements and biases, and elaborating them in perceptual processing terms to the point where I can test if the need to be rejected.

Nick, the important part of science is not the numerical analysis, but what conclusions are drawn from it. As you insist, there are many things that can’t be effectively quantified (comprehension; gestural atmospheric import; readability), but you can gauge—sometimes numerically—some of their manifestations, or some of their determinants. The manifestations have to be indicative of something, so we abstract and study possible determinants.

Eben, I think plain old reading speed is too crude a metric for gauging the effects of manipulating typographical micro-variables, even it over the space of a large text read in one sitting my manipulation reduces the time it takes to get through the passage. I have no way of telling whether all the other possible things that contribute to reading speed have been controlled. The types of tests I’m trying to get a bead on involve fourier transforms, gauging the advantage to speed of recognition of various kinds of ’priming’, assessing the impact of various manipulations on the magnitude of the Word Superiority Effect, ideal observer modeling of neuromechanical flow-through where lateral interference is represented and slot processing is allowed or prohibited.

The best measures of typographical success are probably anecdotal. Other than that all we can do is try and pinpoint what part of the map of reading varying this or that addresses.
____________________

Comments about my graphic:
1) The competant reader has abilities at every level
2) Some levels are more impacted by culture, education, familiarity and sensitivity than others
3) Variations at every level affect all the others in some degree over some extent, and they affect the sustainability and satisfactoriness of our engagement with the text over time.

When we say x improves readability I want to know what is meant in functional anatomical or perceptual-mechanical or gestural atmospheric terms.

http: I guess my link above was too subtle. The point is that Prof. Nagyvary has more successfully than ever before been able to create violins that sound like the Stradavarius’ violins. And he has been able to do it by combining his discoveries in chemistry with traditional craft skills. Similarly, scientific research in reading might help inform and strengthen the artistry of those who draw type, so that the results are better.

Peter (Enneson),

If you’ve published any articles on subjects relevant to this thread, could you please tell me where they can be found? I feel that I need to study some more to be able to exchange ideas with you (and so many other knowledgeable people).

Thanks,

Erik

Q: Is it better to conduct studies with easy or challenging content?

Theoretically, improved type design and paragraph layout should have the same impact on easy or difficult text. Improved type design and paragraph layout work to improve the word recognition process, and easy word recognition is beneficial no matter what the content. If you were interested in organizational factors like providing good headings, then this is certainly more relevant to the more challenging text.

In practice it’s difficult to find appropriate content difficulty. If you use content that is too challenging (i.e. having an expert in literature read a physics textbook) then you’ll find that the time to read will increase dramatically, and reading speed differences will be determined more by the number of times a person needed to reread long passages than by any typographic differences. If content is too easy (i.e. having a professor of physics read a high school physics textbook) then the reader is likely to scan the text rather than truly read it.

Another challenge is that reading performance differs from person to person, so I prefer to have the same person read text from each of the typographic conditions being examined. This means that more than one sample of content is necessary, and it’s desirable to have them of equal difficulty so it doesn’t impact the results (though counterbalancing the passages reduced this problem).

Every study is open to criticism, so I think it’s best to do something that’s good enough and document what you did.

Cheers, Kevin

Erik,
I think you have said pretty much what I was trying to say. Thank you for your elaboration. Like you and William, I feel the need for collaboration between science and craft (and whatever you would call human abilities to interpret, solve, and create). I do feel there is a danger from both the arenas though. Humans interpret data; humans set up testing procedures; humans define criteria and devise theories to prove or disprove. All of these things can involve human error and provide a sense of being “correct” just because it was science. The other side is human hubris and self assurance that “it is my art, therefore it must be great”. Neither art nor science should be accepted without question. We always need to be humble enough to listen to other voices even if what we hear does not fit our own theory or our own ego.

Peter,
I much like your model! You at least seem to have included the meat of the issues. The dilemma is sorting out the interaction of effects. If I say reading is a function of all of your variables, I still have the hard job of measuring how they interact. I might look at one variable sometimes a\nd the cumulative effect of all of them at other times. Making the quantum leap to what to extrapolate from it is the devil of it all. I still don’t see how we can remove deriving meaning from the act of perception of forms and decoding signs.
ChrisL

Chris asked:
“My question is, how do we know when saccades are duplicated or regression occurs if this is due to inability to decipher the letterforms and words (reading) or an inability to understand what the author is trying to say. I hope Kevin can clarify what he said because I may not have gotten it right.”

There is a lot of ongoing research investigating the cause of saccades, including developing models trying to predict when they are going to occur. Some regressive saccades are caused by content problems. For example, if I read “The horse raced past the barn fell”, I can guarantee a regressive saccade after reading the word fell. It’s less likely to happen if I write “The horse that was raced past the barn fell” and even less likely if I precede it with a story about two horses that were raced down different paths, one near a barn. Other regressive saccades are likely caused by word level problems. In some of our eye tracking studies looking at ClearType versus b/w rendering we have seen reductions in regressive saccades indicating that letter quality can improve the mechanics of reading.

Cheers, Kevin

>Theoretically, improved type design and paragraph layout should have the same impact on easy or difficult text.

Yes, this seems reasonable to me. However, what I am thinking of is a threshold kind of effect may be operating. I had suggested that one might measure reading comfort (actually discomfort) by decline in comprehension with time. My suspicion is that what John Hudson calls ’readerability’ can compensate a for a lot of less than optimal conditions by an increased investment of mental effort.

Thus less than optimal type design or layout would barely show up or not at all in a short test—it would be wiped out by increased mental effort of the subject. But if the person were pushed by reading relatively difficult content for a longer period, then you would see a sharp decline of comprehension—and perhaps speed as well—at markedly different times for better and worse conditions, when mental fatigue set in.

Do you see what I am getting at Kevin? Does it make sense?

Erik: See my “Thesseloniki” text printed in Typo#13 along with one of Kevin’s and one of Hrant’s.

Chris: I don’t “remove meaning from the act of perception of forms”. The graphic merely isolates relevant areas of functioning. I claim that encapsulated with the neural code for the visual wordform “x” is a meaning, or ’node’ in our personal construct system, as well as a spelling and a phonetic signature. At each visual wordform resolutional event a node or meaning is directly accessed and placed (as it were) within the sense-following stream.

Ah, well, this constituted a majority slice of my Masters thesis. Colours, fonts, size, icons, blahblahblah.

Conclusion: yes, there are optimal combinations that work for most people. Are they readable to everyone? No, because there’s always a trade-off in what works best, and no enforced standards in non-language communication methods (icons!).

And has been pointed out, then there’s “comprehension” and “cultural standards”....

Erik used the term “Pandora’s box” and that pretty much sums it up.

Linda

Is there a problem with reading?

I was going to respond to this, but I think I would just repeat everything William said. I’ll add that most of the current reading research isn’t predicated on solving any problem at all, but rather for the pure interest in understanding how our brain works.

Nick wrote:
“Numerical method is most useful in product development and testing, ie technology, not in providing general scientific principles that will improve or validate the process of everyday typography or type design.”

Actually I think it’s just the opposite. Statistical analysis and computer modeling are a part of nearly all scientific studies of reading. I can’t recall seeing a study of reading in a psychological journal that didn’t contain statistics. The use of ethnographic research and other qualitative measures are more likely to be part of product design.

Nick wrote:
“I don’t believe any method would be appropriate. Some things are not susceptible to quantitative analysis. This concerns the principle of demarcation between science and pseudo science.”

I don’t understand you. If we measure that people read faster with a particular typographic condition, doesn’t that tell us that reading changes when you change the typographic condition? We can argue about the meaning of the reading speed change, but the reading speed change becomes a fact.

Choz wrote:
“So much of these proposed scientific inquiries are based on legibility=speed=succes. This suggests a hunt for “the one true font”.”

I’m certainly in the camp that argues that there is a relationship between speed and legibility, but I don’t want one font to rule them all. I don’t see any conflict between wanting to have a better understanding of legibility and to also want diverse, interesting, and beautiful typefaces.

William wrote:
“Thus less than optimal type design or layout would barely show up or not at all in a short test”

William, I understand your comprehension measure and it might be very useful. It’s hard to know without trying it. Similarly, it’s an empirical question if optimal type design will show up in a short test. If we’re able to detect differences in a short test, than it is showing up. If we fail to test differences in a short test, then they might show up in a longer test. The opposite is also true.

Cheers, Kevin

Crikey! You all could talk the leg off an iron pot! Are any of youse actaully going to gang up and have a real crack at it???

Muzz

The use of ethnographic research and other qualitative measures are more likely to be part of product design.

But isn’t your work at Microsoft closely connected with getting measurable results for ClearType? At least, that is the impression I got from the ClearType documentary video, that Bill Gates OK’d the project on the understanding that it would produce “real” (ie measurable) results?

We can argue about the meaning of the reading speed change, but the reading speed change becomes a fact.

The distinction is between quantitative description, which is a foregone conclusion if measurements are taken, and the usefulness of those measurements. If a theory of reading is to hold any water, one should be able to apply it to any given typeface, take a series of measurements of different parameters of that face, and predict reading speed.

Kevin, you state that type size effects reading speed, but that is not a scientific proposition, as there is no objective way of measuring type size. Of course, for any given typeface, it is possible to measure its readability apropos its nominal “type size” as decided by the type designer, and determine which set size is optimal for, say, speed, but would the same results hold for different line lengths, different leading, different texts, and so on? And for other typefaces? There are too many variables to make a predictive science out of readability.

>Theoretically, improved type design and paragraph layout should have the same impact on easy or difficult text.

Yes, this seems reasonable to me.

A little devil’s advocation...

Sounds reasonable to me, but are there controlled studies to back that up? It makes sense to me, but is there a scientific rationale? Pluto’s a plannet, that sounds reasonable too. Common sense says that easy-to-read is easy-to-read. However, it may be easier to read short, familiar, or simplistic text in a highly vertical font, and denser material in a squatter font. If there aren’t verified results, the opposite might be true. Our assumptions have a grave impact on the results of scientific theory, and a lot of assumptions appear to be already made about letterforms and typefaces. Social sciences are the toughest ones.

—-

A scientific understanding of reading, and typography will not come cheap, I am sure. A lot of money is spent in other fields of science in anticipation of gaining technology. This attracts private and public sector, and they have no idea what this level of inquiry might benefit them. Some may understand surprises come from pure research, but type isn’t exactly weapons reasearch.

There are a lot of other things I mentioned besides the ’One true font’ silliness. I hope that people consider my suspicions on typeface affecting retention, learning, etc.

Speaking of the above, I realize there isn’t and will never be one true font. Sorta. Typefaces will continue to move off paper and onto screens, screens will improve in dpi, and telecommunications will leave once separate countries even more integrated. This is hardly a prediction. Without any research, a small set, based on designers refining extisting faces by eye, market forces, and popular feedback has begun to emerge. Time, inertia and cultural intermeshing will make this smaller set dominant, unless research provides a reason why those who pay for fonts should get something different.

Anything that breaks the traditional, trained flow that we have while reading causes people to stop. Painfully, for some, it seems.~ But what else can a new face offer besides variations on the existing themes? What technology can we create? What can we make them do? Or shall we continue with the status quo until mechanical changes again invent new type?

Choz Cunningham
!Exclamachine Type Foundry
Choose the Snark

>If we fail to test differences in a short test, then they might show up in a longer test. The opposite is also true.

I just think that if my suggestion of measuring discomfort by decreasing comprehension with time turns out to be at all useful, a test with difficult material and longer time is more likely to get clear results.

This is because I think the brain has robust and redundant and adaptable systems for comprehension of text. We can read right through misspellings, reversed letters etc with comprehension. Hence to detect the more and less ideal layouts and designs it might be advantageous to create conditions that defeat that adaptability first.

I don’t know if the idea is valid, but it seems to me worth trying to see if it helps. For if it is right it will lead to a more ready discrimination of better and worse designs from the point of view of readibility.

>There are too many variables to make a predictive science out of readability.

The ’too many variables’ is a regular argument against scientific research. Following this argument we would also abandon medical research. The human body has myriads of variables, but we still manage to gain scientific insights into the way the body works and to cure disease. If you look at the history of science, every problem looks like it has too many variables until you understand them. When you have good theories and crucial tests that isolate variables, then real progress is made.

[Choz] “...money spent [...] in anticipation of gaining...”

If it can be shown that a perceptual learning process establishes or puts in place a new neural processing routine (one not dependant on letter-level ’slot processing’ but on detection of the specific pattern of blacks and whites at the stems / diagonals / bowls / counters level of the whole-word object); and that this learning process must occur for the learning reader not to get hung up in phonological “disambiguation overhead”* problems (especially in a non-transparent orthography) associated with learning to read; and that this learning process is facilitated by “rhythmic” spacing (because rhythmic spacing sets up a relationship of whites and a relationship of blacks at the stems / diagonals / bowls / counters level that is unfriendly to slotting activation of receptor cells according to letter) the consequences might be huge in terms of literacy and its discontents.

And well-set type is the catalyst.

Gates is enough of a philanthropist to like such a consequence of good typography at the location where most kids spend much of their reading time.

* See David Boulton’s line of questioning in the interviews here. Search under ’disambiguation’. (Also check out the other interviesws linked at the bottom. In many of them the same line of questioning is pursued.)

[I lightly edited my last post (with a few new words and semicolons) for clarity.]

> A scientific understanding of reading, and typography will not come cheap

Luckily Kevin works at this little company called MS.

hhp

The ‘too many variables’ is a regular argument against scientific research.

When you have good theories and crucial tests that isolate variables, then real progress is made.

Bill, not only are there too many variables, they change all the time, and on the question of isolating them, that’s impossible. As I previously mentioned, Kevin has been investigating “type size”, but without an objective scientific measure of what that is. Heck, there isn’t even a consensus on what “en” size is (as was revealed in a recent Typophile thread).

In health, gazillions of dollars and man hours have been spent analyzing the workings of the human body, and yet many areas of health still remain soft, mental health in particular being a bone of contention.

It would be an absolutely massive project to scientifically determine the way that reading works, in relation to the varfiety of typefaces and the population at large, and then it would need updating every few years as cultures evolve.

I would not be so skeptical if our leading researchers were actually able to isolate and measure type size — or to come up with an index of readability based on a formula connecting different measurable parameters of typefaces. But as has been pointed out repeatedly by typographers, different typefaces have different sizes on the body. So to base scientific theory on what is an arbitrary, designer-defined designation of size is, IMO, not only ignorant (of typography) but bogus.

There is no phylogenic structure, driven by genetic agents, in the classification of types — it is an entirely cultural phenomenon which cannot be discovered and ordered as the biological world may be. So your analogy with health is not apt.

And I’ll pull the classic pseudo-science physiognomy out of the bag again. It was assumed by some that there was a connection between cranial measurements and intelligence. Might not the same be true of readability research, that there is no hard and fast connection between type measurements and readability — which is, after all, just as nebulous a concept as intelligence?

[Nick] “There is no phylogenic structure, driven by genetic agents, in the classification of types” Don’t say that to Robert Bringhurst. His articles in Hosek’s now defunct Serif try to do just that. See his argument in the introductory piece.

It is impossible to quantify the variables along their different axis in such a way that we can predict the effect of every move we make in such a way that when we are asked for [2% faster] you can just go to [parameter: contrast] and reduce it at [stem and bowl point “y”] and adjust by [“z”].

It is possible to say—or so I hope to have confirmed at some point in my journey—that rhythmic spacing sets up the right word-shape conditions to keep visual wordform resolution robust, so please attend to it with proper care, and let the need to optimize it guide your actions in shaping your glyph set.

Nick wrote:
“As I previously mentioned, Kevin has been investigating “type size”, but without an objective scientific measure of what that is. Heck, there isn’t even a consensus on what “en” size is (as was revealed in a recent Typophile thread).”

In the type size thread, I was reporting Tinker’s findings, not my own. To conduct a study on any variable you do need to define your variables. There may not be ‘one’ way to define type size, but there are several ways. I believe that Tinker used nominal point sizes. I think everyone understands the difference between a 10 point and 11 point Garamond. It’s not necessary to reach a consensus on definitions to conduct a study; only to describe what you actually did. If someone else prefers x-height as the measure of type size, it’s easy enough to convert from the 10 point Garamond to that measure. No matter what definition of type size you use, the study itself is still scientific.

“And I’ll pull the classic pseudo-science physiognomy out of the bag again. It was assumed by some that there was a connection between cranial measurements and intelligence.”

Assumptions are not science, they are theories. Now if a test shows that there is evidence to support a theory, then the theory starts to be interesting. If there is a lot of evidence, then it is more interesting. How sure are you that there is no relationship between cranial measurements and intelligence? People still study intelligence, even though there is certainly no universally accepted definition. There is good evidence of a correlation between cranial size and intelligence, and the evidence is even better if you measure just the brain size eliminating skull thickness.

Cheers, Kevin

“Luckily Kevin works at this little company called MS.”

I appreciate your high opinion of me, but I stand little chance by myself of making much of a dent in understanding the effect of typography on reading. We need a community of people conducting such studies. We need a community for a couple reasons. First, it will take many, many people to conduct all the studies that have been discussed just in this thread. And what usually happens is that more questions open up as the knowledge in a field grows. Second, with a community there is valuable disagreement about the interpretations of studies, and about what should be done next. That diversity is very important.

Because of my particular biases, I plan to be doing a lot of work at the letter recognition level. I think this is the important key that is missing in the existing reading research field. Others on this thread disagree with me and think other areas will be more fruitful. Unfortunately I don’t have the ability to go down all paths.

I think the key is to build a bridge between the typography community and the reading psychology community. Reading psychologists would become interested in typographic research if it was clear that there were interesting questions to be asked which could also have a practical impact. Reading psychologists do need to learn about typography to work in this area (and certainly should not be modifying fonts themselves). Conversely, typographers should learn more about reading psychology and the large community of researchers doing work today (I am in awe of Peter for the work that he has done on this). It would help if typographers would attend reading psychology conferences to learn about their work and to build personal connections.

Cheers, Kevin

This means that more than one sample of content is necessary, and it’s desirable to have them of equal difficulty so it doesn’t impact the results

How can you ensure that different samples are of equal difficulty? And if you give the same sample to a number of people who will be viewing it for the first time, how do you ensure that they all have about the same education, eyesight etc etc etc? I guess the only way to arrive at generalizable conclusions is to have a very large number of test results, so that small differences between samples and between test subjects don’t have a significant impact on the outcome.

My suspicion is that what John Hudson calls ‘readerability’ can compensate a for a lot of less than optimal conditions by an increased investment of mental effort.

What if mental effort could be measured and thus become a control variable? We need those brain scientists to tell us if this could be measured with little electrodes or some fancy brain scanning technology.

The ‘too many variables’ is a regular argument against scientific research. Following this argument we would also abandon medical research.

Absolutely. Having too many variables doesn’t mean the problem can’t be tackled, it just means new methodologies are required. If you cannot control all the variables in turn, or don’t even know what all the variables are, more traditional research methods may not yield results. Instead of ignoring some or most of the variables to make the experiment “controllable”, it may be more fruitful to change the way the experiment is conducted.

Don’t say that to Robert Bringhurst.

I don’t have to. He acknowledges as much in the Serif article by asking “Where are the genitalia? How do types reproduce themselves?” He constructs a beautiful, elaborate metaphor based on biological taxonomy, but that is all it is, a poetic metaphor, prefaced by a great many apologies couched in learned terms, eg comparing oxymorons in botanical names to oxymoronic typeface names, and reference to the Principle of Perversity (related to Heisenberg) whereby type designers defy pigeonholing. As he admits, for something like this to become more of a science, a soft science, it has to have a global scope and get a lot of people involved in developing a consensus. But it’s only type, and Myfonts, Veer and FontShop are independently calling the taxonomic shots with their choice of searchable keywords, which ain’t exactly peer review. Although perhaps market forces will bring it all together.

> I stand little chance by myself

I agree. Which is why my opinion of you wouldn’t be so high if you only had the smarts and the rich employer; the third key element is your propensity for listening. This is why I allow myself to hope that we can get you to change your mind about focusing on individual letters.

> I am in awe of Peter

Me too. I also like Eben, and Paul. They all harbor the Doubt so essential to progress. This is one thing I suggest should be integrated more deeply by yourself. None of our teachers were sufficiently correct - that’s why we’re still stuck here.

hhp

Nick, Robert’s dead serious about seeing typographic variation as a branch of natural history. He sees the ’site’ of the equivalents of sexual congress and genetic mutation as in the type designer’s head. And one of the four feet of the type designer’s head is in his or her hands. (See The Typographic Mind [Gaspereau Press, 2006] for this last bit.

What do you do? You take the didoni genotype and introduce your own mutations, hopefully without straight phenotypical ’lifting’ from Bodoni. You introduce these mutations provoked by the new ecology of reading or printing or display in which they must survive. The genotype is in the public domain. Your phenotypical incarnation is your own.

[Hrant, I blame you for starting me along this track; and Kevin, damn you for forcing me, by your resistence, to ’dash madly off in all directions’(in terms of my reading list). (And there are several others...) But really, I don’t feel that I am ’there’ yet; in fact, it is possible that I am dead wrong. Eventually I may sink in the sea of my own personal constructs. But for now I’ll ride them til they crack.]

Go for it Peter! we are proud of you!

ChrisL

Likewise!

When we were discussing the Snark, it was quite important to people that the appearance strongly represent the conceptual meaning. I don’t mind, but found it surprising, since the latin glyphs are pretty far from pictographic. Surprising in that even I wanted it to be a pictogaph of both sentence trermination more than competing proposals, and that I was tickled when others pointed out the wryness.

I’ve been thinking about legibility, and how wide a range of shapes we can recognize as a given letter. I was also pondering is some letters are ’stronger’ or more recognizable, such as how an ’o’ matches the mouth’s shape on a long ’o’ sound, creating a fairly hard bit of wiring. Are some letters weak, and thier recognition sometimes only derived from process of elimination? Then, I mused on the possibilities of Opentype’s contextual awareness. What if all the letters changed shape to assist in pronouciation, so that a shwa was an indeterminate metavowel-like shape? Silent ’k’s or ’gh’s could shrink and long vowels could be more geometric. y’s descenders could be morphed above the bsaeline when it behaves as a vowel. All through substitution dictionariesunder languages preferences in the OT tables.
To go further, there are other things that could be done, adding whiskers to the ’a’ in cat? Might assist cognition, might become a crutch.

The other thing I was pondering about legibility, is what is an ’a’ or ’b’, exactly, and is an ’a’ or ’b’ in one font as legible, but with a different meaning? This alone could be a long post, but I can’t go there tonight.

We’d defininitely need stronger development software, and some readied feature profiles for OT to use this regularly, but in scientific inquiry this might be interesting stuff to play with.

Muzz- Don’t worry, I’ve got several ideas in mind, but that’s for another time. Like anyone, I gotta pay them bills first.

Choz Cunningham
!Exclamachine Type Foundry
The Snark

Robert’s dead serious about seeing typographic variation as a branch of natural history.

I disagree with his premise, because typefaces aren’t made by cross-breeding, in the designer’s head or wherever. Robert’s structure makes a lovely metaphorical parallel, but the mechanics aren’t there.

Speaking of didones, I’ve done an adaptation of one, Bodoni Egyptian, but I didn’t cross-breed Bodoni with another typeface. I used GB’s skeletal letter forms and the digital Bauer Bodoni “slab” serifs, while removing the contrast of stroke weight, creating a monoline Egyptian. As far as I’m aware, the idea came into being for many reasons. Firstly, as a 1980s art director, I’ve spent some time comping Bodoni-style headlines, so I have a tactile feeling for the fine-point marker-rendered didone, and an awareness of filling in the stroke as a separate process. Secondly, the idea of an old style Egyptian, with two-bowl g, is something I realized hadn’t been done and would be cool. (The Perversity Principle, or as J. Hoefler noted in his Emigre article, the type designer filling in the cracks, the ecological niches). Thirdly, I have some very large typositor print-outs of Bodoni Book that were useful to trace over. Fourthly, I’ve wondered what is definitive about certain archetypal forms that exist in the common awareness, and Bodoni E is an exploration of Bodoni-ness — is it the letter shapes or the serif forms? At one point, this was Bodoni Sans, but I decided that was pushing it too far. Fifthly, how about a monoline typeface, where the caps have the same stroke weight as the lower case and the serifs? Sixth, considering the tension between ITC Bodoni and digital Bauer Bodoni. So I created the environment of a typeface vacuum in my head, shaped by all these factors, and then worked to fill it. I’m sorry, but I don’t see the process as natural, it is cultural and personal, more like a mixture of cloning and genetic engineering than breeding.

Nick, that’s a nice description of your process.

But what you describe does involve a little cross-breeding (GB’s skeletal letter forms and the digital Bauer Bodoni “slab” serifs), but mostly descent with modifications, which might parent other things.

Your cultured internal machinations are the mechanism of typographical diversification. They’re ’natures way’. The structure of typographical evolution is the same in principle as the structure of biological evelotion.

(But this is a sideroad in this thread)

Your cultured internal machinations are the mechanism of typographical diversification. They’re ‘natures way’. The structure of typographical evolution is the same in principle as the structure of biological evelotion.

I’m trying to make the distinction between structure and mechanism. Two structures may look the same, but this is likely merely the similarity that a particular system of feature-cataloguing imparts to diverse complex systems.

My cultured internal machinations are “culture’s way”, ennit. Culture and nature are quite different. Your equivalence-making could be applied to any cultural process that takes place over time. “Descent” as you use it means that A preceded B and there is some relationship, but that is not a description of a natural mechanism with physical or chemical agents with measurable qualities, such as DNA and genes. Besides, the Bringhurst metaphor breaks down when one considers historicist revivals, most notably William Morris’ types — which was like Jurrasic Park. And that is the difference between all cultural evolutionary trees and biological evolution — the cultural history is based first on a subjective categorization of what happened and what was important (the “master narrative”), and also fertilization can flashback/forward in time.

It’s certainly useful to derive intellectual metaphors from cultural “cross-pollination”, but that is all they are. There is, for instance, no science of memes (although corporate viral marketers would no doubt like one). During the craze for natural philosophy (as science was then known) in the early 19th century, Samuel Coleridge would attend Humphrey Davey’s lectures “to replenish my stock of metaphors”.

For a theory to explain cultural evolution, rather than borrowing from natural history it would be better to look at the evidence and try to figure out what’s happening, with a new and original paradigm. That’s what the McLuhans did: http://www.horton.ednet.ns.ca/staff/scottbennett/media/

I read most of the posts on this... sorry for not being entirely thorough.

-Screen reading / paper

Big issues there with more people using the internet and RSS for their daily news and life. E-mail being relied on as a means by which to do business.

With the fairly new e-ink products on the market that use reflective light instead of back lighting for electronic books I would assume that the issues involved would mirror those of paper. I myself read at least a novel a week as well as other types of reading, most of it done in mass-transit; I can see a huge market for e-ink products, with every other person on the El-Train (Chicago) stuffing their noses in books.

Anyway... just another variable sorry if I missed a previous mention of it.

Wikipedia:

• E-ink: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_Ink
• E-paper: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_paper

______________________

CLB

Design should never say, “Look at me.” It should always say, “Look at this.”

The great thing about e-ink is its ability to combine the ergonomic benefits of paper with the dynamism of the screen. Imagine for example embedding a motion sensor in an e-ink document, giving it the ability to increase the layout margins when on the metro (to reduce nausea).

hhp

It will be very cool to work directly on an e-ink screen with a stylus.
What do you think, another ten years?

It would be cool, if they implemented a really good eraser. :-)

hhp

Nick, I’ll not belabour it, but there are analogues of biological evolution in every social and cultural sphere, just like there are analogues to geological processes in every social and cultural sphere. See A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History by Manuel De Landa (Zone Books; 1997). (And conversely, there are analogues of McLuhan’s Tetrad in the biological sphere, or so it seems from a quick familiarization with them.) Metaphors may depend on these analogues but the analogues are there, they’re real. It does no harm to the singularity of action in the typographical sphere to point to or highlight the biological analogue in the cultural sphere, and it is relevant and interesting to use it as a basis of charting kinships in the kingdom (= kinship-domain) of letterforms.

Neither I nor Robert would want to claim the mechanisms are biochemical.

Imagine for example embedding a motion sensor in an e-ink document, giving it the ability to increase the layout margins when on the metro (to reduce nausea).

That would be an amazing application of UI technology as well as type technology. More typesetting than type design, but still, sounds good to me! And probably even better to Biddy.

Choz Cunningham
!Exclamachine Type Foundry
The Snark

Hi everyone,

I am trying to locate Larson’s latest article fron TYPO.22

“Measuring the reading experience”

I live in little Halifax, Nova Scotia, and no magazine stores carry this, nor can they locate it.

Provided I respect copyright law, does anyone know how I might be able to get my hands on this article? Time is a factor.

I tried to contact Larson directly at Microsoft, but have been unsuccessful.

I appreciate any help you can offer.

Try this link Müller:

http://www.magtypo.cz

ChrisL

That only lets me order an entire subscriotion. I just need the 1 article.

“Measuring the reading experience”

Ive found PDF’s here of other articles from TYPO, but I can’t find this one.

Does anyone know

a) How to contact Larson personally, or
b) Where I can get a pdf of this article

Just wait a day or so.

hhp

Dear Muller,
Please contact me at kevlar at microsoft com, and I can help you.
Cheers, Kevin

Hrant wrote:
> There will always be ways to make fonts/shoes more comfortable for a longer
> duration.
This analogy makes my feet hurt. Shoes, you see, wear out as a result of variables I don’t have time to list. Some of it is good analogy , because, e.g. our eyes have unequal lengths in both seeing and being seen as our legs have unequal lengths in walking and being walked.

> And you don’t do it to please the masses (consciously). You do it because you
> respect the craft, and care about the user.
I do do typeface design to please masses, consciously and with care about the user. I do font design with respect for the craft and care about the user as well. Whatdidyoureallymean?

Carl Wrote:
> As Bill points out, the many variables interact, so it’s a very big project to
> try to separate them.
Yet for some purposes, like text on screens, if you do separate out the variables that you can, and the user does have control over these variables, then you no longer have to try and separate them out. :)

Eben wrote, I said:
> whatever theory is used to describe what happens in reading latin characters
> had better have some way of dealing with arabic & chinese too or it was going
> to be sub-standard
I think, clearly, there is an evolutionary trend in evidence (script-wise), that supports understanding the whole thing, as an important goal. It’s clear that (normally) we are heavily wired for human face recognition. No matter what script we read, we all do faces, from whence, logo recognition’s not a stretch, and scripts closer to logos are common enough that we have a evolutionary stop for a lot of readers. Then there are scripts set in clusters along lines, and then striated scripts (Latin vs. Hebrew, e.g.), and now, immersive Latin reading means to parse a striated script, set in clusters in lines with logos mixed in, and with variation of style and composition, perhaps updating dynamically as we read.

>Erik Van Blokland made a typeface that varied randomly called Kosmik.
Beowolf varied randomly. Kosmik, I think, varies thoughtfully.

Muzzerote:
> If all you blokes put your heads together I reckon you’d make a font that’s
> heaps better than all these cruddy ones these days. Are you up for it???
Heaps better, for sure. The issue is always — what kind of heap?

Paul Wrote:
> Perhaps one text that only incorporates the commonest of words and
> information, and then sets of texts that progress in complexity of
> vocabularity and concept? This may be the hardest variable to isolate?
In typographic experimentation, it is not the point to test user intelligence. But it brings up an interesting point; “The work” of determining the variables that foster immersive reading is done by who? In print, it is done upfront; work from the conception of the material to the specification of the paper speed in the printer, all done in the critical interest of readability, (the type spec. someplace in the midst), for some particular audience. This is not some great mystery. What has happened in the last 20 years or so, is that the population who used to do “the work” between the type designer and the user have all but disappeared. And unfortunately, parts of the technology required to replace them (or us), have not been fostered, even for print. At the same, time, with technology appearing that puts global publishing in the hands of the user, not surprisingly, the same parts of the technology required to replace “the work” have lagged behind even further. The resultant widespread publication of unreadable materials is hardly a surprise, neither is the replacement of longer texts with shorter ones as the species reacts.

Bram.. Wrote:
> teacher in her school felt that way, and that they will benefit by having a
> “font advisor” come in
This sounds like a pretty simple web site. I also wish Century Schoolbook meant something to these people, (as a first step), and it’s another example of “the work” that’s missing between font design, and user.

Biddy wrote:
>Why would I be able to read the Washington Post Express, without feeling sick, but not a paperback?
Just another barf-proof product from The Font Bureau? We have a wider, slightly heavier version of the same face for readers on tilt-a-whirls.

> This analogy makes my feet hurt.

Well, no anology is perfect. Any perfect analogy is in fact simply the thing you’re talking about, hence not an analogy, but merely a description, hence no fun. :-)

I find that footwear design/use is the best (non-esoteric) analogy to type design/use. Most people use architecture - which is completely off.

> I do do typeface design to please masses,
> consciously and with care about the user.

You (and I hope every other designer, except maybe Baudelaire :-) does type design consciously yourself, but part of what you address affects something beyond the consciousness of the user (even if one doesn’t realize that). And my point was that this part is the non-mainstream, non-(obviously-)commercial part, the thing that drives progress.

hhp

Yet for some purposes, like text on screens, if you do separate out the variables that you can, and the user does have control over these variables, then you no longer have to try and separate them out. :)

Users can already control some typographic variables on web sites and such: they can change typeface, point size and even leading, sometimes simply by clicking a little button that activates a script that changes CSS settings. I wonder if devices such as e-ink will one day become as common as, or even more common than, paper and give users so much control that everyone will be able to find the combination of settings that makes the text at hand more legible to them.

If so, legibility/readability research would be crucially important to determine what settings users should be able to control. Flick a little switch here and you get ligatures; turn a little knob and increase leading; turn another knob and decrease ascenders and descenders or increase x-height; and so on.

Some book designers may lose their jobs when publishers decide to cut costs because supposedly users can do most of the fine-tuning by themselves. On the other hand, type designers will be busier than ever designing complex families that can be manipulated by users in a number of ways à la Multiple Master.

> You do[] type design consciously yourself, but part of what you address affects something beyond the consciousness of the user (even if one doesn’t realize that).

Hrant, all of what we do in text font design is beyond the consciousness of the text font reader, isn’t it? My subconscious relationship ends with the recognition of the letter I’m drawing, at which point consciousness takes over and I make the decisions required to render the letters beyond the consciousness of the user, where, unless there is to be a relationship between the form of the letters and the meaning of the word they form, it’s supposed to remain beyond the consciousness of the user.

>Users can already control some typographic variables on web sites and such:

Yes, that’s true Erik, but imagine the effect on readability, and eventually reader-ability, if print type, from type design to final composition, only had, at the “pinnacle of control”, control over only some variables, by some users?

By pinnacle of control, I mean that if one needs to, one can do anything possible on the printed page to tune the composition for readability for a particular level of reader-ability. Fonts for screens, on the other hand are plagued by constraints: CSS is 70’s typesetting technology, Browsers grant users poor size choices, OS vendors hide filtering properties, no-one addresses page color effectively— and these are not the only problems afflicting immersive anti-aliased Latin font reading. Even when the resolution tragedy is not present, the rest of these constraints make certain that type designs cannot function properly in their quest to deliver dynamic capabilities in areas like spacing, weighting, styling and sizing.

at which point consciousness takes over

But how do you account for style? Not all designers have it to a pronounced degree, but Fred Goudy, Luc de Groot and Jon Barnbrook, to name a few off the top of my head, have a way of putting curves and straight lines together that is quite personal, a developed sense of proportion and form which they exercise intuitively. In the case of Fred and Luc, its origins in chirography — in the hand — seems pretty clear. Or would you say that the decision to incorporate chirographic elements into a design is a “micro-managed”, conscious decision to let the hand (and its subconscious, trained programming) have its way?

I agree with Nick - although I’m pretty sure he does
not agree with the first segment of my elaboration:

The relevance of style is qualitatively different on either side of the display-text divide, and it’s quantitatively different on the text side in proportion to size (mainly, although things like paper/lighting quality can also play a notable role), but style is never absent. Nothing a human makes can be devoid of style, and nothing made for a human should be.

One thing Nick:
To me de Groot is far less c