Typeface or Font Readability

Which typeface (or font if you prefer it that way) is the easiest to read, especially by less-accomplished readers?

I started these pages in 2004. Many people were getting Microsoft Office at home and at work and they could drop down a choice of font. Fonts? Well, that was new. Now we must learn about fonts, to find out which is the best.

If you are given a choice, then it is a natural human need to want to know which, among the choices you are given, is the best choice to make. This despite the experience that in many things, there is no absolute perfect choice. If you look in the cake shop window, you will not want to choose the same thing always, now, will you? At breakfast you might like a croissant and in the afternoon a cream cake. Everyone knows that don’t they? Do they?

A little knowledge is often a dangerous thing, and for some reason the psyche of many cannot apply the cake-shop rule to that which is new to them. They want to know which is best. Which is easiest to read? Which is the perfect choice for all occasions?

I come at this not as a typographer but as an observer of human nature, and fonts, for complex reasons, have gripped the world’s populace. Experts abound, each knowing, for evidence proves it they say, that this or that font is the ‘correct’ one.

(And of course one mustn’t tell anyone, to their face, that they are behaving like a rabbit, for a rabbit does not know that it is a rabbit, it thinks it is a being.)

These pages discuss some of the things that you may be able to use as some form of evidence with those who have a fixed view of things. I hope you are lucky; it will certainly be an uphill struggle.

For those who actually want to learn about using type, try for a startoff: 50 Totally Free Lessons in Graphic Design Theory by Danny Outlaw. See also The Typographer as Reader, by Will Hill on the Linotype Font Lounge. OK, some of that is a bit complicated and a lot to take in in one go. Just remember: varied blocks; not too dense; lots of air; line spacing. Don’t worry too much about which font.

Here’s a little doggerel poem I wrote on the topic, together with an index to the other pages in the set:

Pages:

Whaddya know? Fonts predate computers!

Arial and Comic Sans – some people say they’re the best

Serif v. Sans-serif

Dyslexia – should we design for dyslexia?

Type sizes, what makes you think that bigger is better?

Capital letters, what’s wrong with capital letters?

Readability and Legibility

The academic evidence base

The real-world evidence base (the newspapers)

And now for something really sensible

And in Colour? (You really should see my text colour readability page)

Mr Pirde thought long and hard

And bought then for his desk at home.

A new computer – shiny clean!

Next he had to learn the ways

But he had been to school.

There he’d learned that if you learned

The rights and wrongs you will succeed

And he who asks will get reward.

Roofless Ruth was there at hand,

An expert, she, in all that moved.

She lifted her red-painted nail

And pointed it at Mr Pirde.

There are rules, she said,

And them that fails them

Will be told they’ve done it wrong.

See those fonts that drop down manifold

And their sizes, there to choose;

If you don’t select these right

Your writings will be hard to read

For those of limited faculties.

Gosh! said Mr Pirde, I’m so impressed

With your wealth of certainty!

Yes, said Ruth, I have been told these things

Determinedly by clever folks.

Mr Pirde now knew, he had a rule

And he could rest contentedly,

For uncertainties and things that have no bounds

Are really, really scary.

And now for something really sensible

If you have read these pages, you should have come to believe that there is no such thing as a ‘best’ typeface. And to prove it to your boss, who probably knows for sure that there is, you can show him or her the demonstration of typestyle in relation to fashions in clothing, that you can find at www.linotype.com/2258-16895/fashionandtypeface.html. Now does your boss still believe that only Comic Sans will do? Oh, well, you’d better use Comic Sans, then. That dumb boss.

And further reading about legibility? You can’t do better than this: www.linotype.com/ 2258-16905/ aboutlegibility.html

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And in colour?

There’s also the issue of readability of different colours of text on different hues and shades of background. This complicates the subject rather, and I’m in the process of building up some pages on this. You can make a start with my text colour readability page and you can accompany this with experiments using TypeTester.

Essentially, when looking at colour readability, the hue (eg red, green, blue etc) is of minimal importance; far more important for readability is the relative brightness of text against background. That is to say, that red on green is perfectly readable (despite what your teacher said) provided it’s a light red against a dark green or vice versa. You really should see my text colour readability page. Have fun!

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