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Category How we read type

Reading is a lot more complicated than just picking up a book and flipping through it. Explore the physiology of how our brains process type to improve your own typography!

Date Thursday, May 28th 2026
Venue Stanford University / Alumni Left
How we read type

Comparative Legibility and Readability Studies: a A Framework for Under-researched Scripts

This presentation is founded on an ongoing a PhD project to investigate the performance of Greek typefaces in operating systems and user interface (UI) environments. Greek is one of the most widely supported scripts after Latin across both operating systems and web-safe fonts, but despite its unique historical and cultural importance, it remains critically understudied.Previous… Continue reading Comparative Legibility and Readability Studies: a A Framework for Under-researched Scripts

How we read type

Rhythm and Legibility

There seems to be enough evidence that there is a relation between different typefaces and legibility. It would be of huge interest to understand the underlying factors. Reading has been thoroughly studied in terms of how language is processed in the brain but reading scientists care mainly about what happens cognitively. When people see fonts… Continue reading Rhythm and Legibility

How we read type

Designing with science

In this presentation, Matthew Carter and Kevin Larson discuss what letter recognition tests might uncover and how those results could be used in practice. From the ATypI 2013 conference in Amsterdam. Reading psychologists have shown that we recognize words by first recognizing individual letters, then using the letters to build up a word. This implies… Continue reading Designing with science