Design Practice: Design Principles: Legibility & Readibility

"Type is Speech Made Visable"

Type boomed thanks to Mass Production, Invention of the Printing Press and People learning how to Read, leaving the oral tradition of word of mouth.

Type Characteristics:

Accents of Fonts (Weights, Italics, Bold, ect.) produce a Tone of Voice and Characteristics for the Typeface- This produces associations (one typeface reminds them of one thing) which can be emohasized by colour (gender/personality) as well

Typeface- A Collection of characters which have the same distinct design
Font- The physical means used to create a font

Fonts have 4 key catagories which are distinguishable between weights, serif and sans serif:

Block- Display/ header Font not made for Body Copy (It's a trap because you can have a Block version of the other catagories)
Gothic- Sans Serif Simplicity
Roman- Serif
Script- Brush style with different variations in weight

Font is all the same weight (Individually) whereas Typeface (All The Individual Fonts Together) is different weights

Weights (Variations of Fonts in a Font Family):

Regular- Original Fonts Weight (The Starting Point)
Regular/ Italics
Light
Light/Italics
Bold
Bold/ Italics
Condensed- Effecting the spacing of the Counters
Boldface- Equivelent to Block
Extended

We then had to take the letterforms that we had previously gathered for the last session and put them into piles of weight variations (see picture).

Weights

We only had 2 piles (regular and condensed) as, despite the fact that there were alot of thick lined fonts, alot of them were already regular or in thier original format.

We then had to put them into the 4 key font catagories (see picture)

4 Key Font Catagories

I found this alot more interesting as you had to really look at the physical traits and characteristivs of the fonts to be able to determine what pile they would go in. For example, script has a font that wouldn't be described as script aesthetically but it uses different weight variations.

Legibility & Readability:

Looking at the spacial quality of how a typeface operates and overriding the automatic brain function of reading without seeing

Counter- The Negatve space around a letterform that makes it legible or illegible
            - Spaces where you work define the letters eg. Fed Ex Logo
            - Condensed typefaces loose thier counters (Microsoft Word counteracts this by extending
               font when bolded)

Serifs are easier to read due to thier deifned shape but read better at a 9-12 pt size whereas Sans Serifs are more robust but read best at a 12-14pt size

Legibility- Is the degree that glyths (individual characteristics) in text are understandable or recogniseable
                based on appearance
             - As long as the anatomy is there and is clear then it doesn't matter the aesthetic of the font

Readability- Is the ease in which a text can be read and understood. Influenced by line length, primary
                      & secondary leading, justification, typestyle, kerning, tracking, point size, ect
                                            -Leading- the space between each individual letterform
                                                          - small pieces of lead between each letter (secondary)
                                            - Tracking- Increasing the leading spacing and breaking down of the font
                                            - Kerning- Bringing the leading spacing together (Never Kern BodyCopy)

GENERAL RULE- NO MORE THAN 3 FONTS. NO MORE THAN 3 TYPEFACES.

Study Task

We were given back our original fonts and we have to research and find there full typeface family including bolds, italics and lights. We had to find the most readable font and point size as well as present it with the phrase "The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over The Lazy Dog". I quickly found that only 1 of my fonts had a full typeface family that would allow the changing of weights
.
Braggadocio:

Braggadocio Font Family Research
Available from http://www.fonts.com/font/monotype-imaging/braggadocio (Accessed 18th November 2012)

This research informed me that this typeface only has one font and therefore only one in it's family- the regular one I'm already using.

I found that the most readable version of this was Braggadocio Regular in Point Size 80

Braggadocio Upper and Lowercase Alphabet Regular 80pt

Braggadocio Regular Pangram

Colonna MT:

Colonna MT Font Family Research
Available from http://www.fonts.com/font/monotype-imaging/colonna (Accessed 18th November 2012)

Colonna MT Upper and Lowercase Alphabet Regular 100pt

Colonna MT Regular Pangram

Courier New:

Courier New Font Family Research
Available from http://www.fonts.com/font/microsoft-corporation/courier-new?isRatingExpanded=False#product_1122078 (Accessed 18th November 2012)

After researching into the font family, I experimented with the clarity of each one using Illustrator playing with the weights and the styles as well as point sizes.

Courier New Font Family Experimentation

I found that the most readable version of this was Courier New Bold Italic in Point Size 90

Courier New Upper and Lowercase Alphabet in Bold Italic 90pt

Courier New Bold Italic 90pt Pangram

Bernard MT Condensed:

Bernard MT Condensed Font Family Research
Available from http://www.fonts.com/font/monotype-imaging/monotype-bernard (Accessed 18th November 2012)

Bernard MT Condensed Upper and Lowercase Alphabet Regular 103.69pt

Bernard MT Condensed Regular Pangram

Edwardian Script ITC

Edwardian Script Font Family Research
Available from http://www.fonts.com/font/itc/itc-edwardian-script (Accessed 18th November 2012)

After researching into the font family, I experimented with the clarity of each one using Illustrator playing with the weights and the styles as well as point sizes.

Edwardian Script ITC Font Experimentation

I found that the most readable version of this was Edwardian Script Regular in Point Size130

Edwardian Script ITC Upper and Lowercase Alphabet Regular 130pt

Edwardian Script ITC Pangram

In preparation for the next session, we had to select 4 new fonts with 1 Block, 1 Roman, 1 Script and 1 Gothic Font specifically. We had to put the Upper and Lowercase A, B & C at a large scale in a 10cm x 10cm square.

Script- French Script MT