Dafne Martinez With the goal of developing a typeface capable of performing well in children’s books, Dafne Martínez and Sandra García conducted an analysis of fonts used in reading-instruction books distributed in Mexican public schools. The pair based their research on prior studies, which indicated that the biggest hurdles children face when learning to read are presented by characters sharing similar morphologies—for example, the letters b, d, p, and q. The Grotesk style currently appears in these textbooks as the primary font; its features include symmetrical shapes and a high degree of similarity between characters, which made Martínez and García wonder if this was the most appropriate typographic choice. Starting from the premise that correctly identifying and distinguishing characters is crucial to the process of learning to read, they conducted a field study with students between six and ten years of age to corroborate that their font and others they consider more suitable for such textbooks perform better than what is currently being used. The tests consisted of projections showing letters, words, and phrases displaying the most easily confused characters, and asking the study subjects to identify and replicate what they observed so that Martínez and García could later analyze parameters like certainty and time to respond. They believe it’s relevant to share their results because they could help improve decisions made during the process both of designing typefaces and of choosing type for editorial products.
より優れた読者を生み出すためのタイポグラフィ：児童の字形認識の研究
児童の読書に最適な書体を作るため、マルティネスとガルシアはメキシコの教科書で使われている書体の分析を始めた。また過去の研究結果を調べるうちに、読書を習得中の児童が最も苦手とするのは形の似ている字であることが判明した（b d p qなど）。現在はグロテスク体がメインの教科書用書体として使われているが、対照的や似た字形が多く本当にこれが最適な選択なのかは疑問である。読書の習得にとって各文字の正しい認識と識別はとても重要という考えから、6歳から10歳の児童たちの協力を得て、自身の書体やその他の現状よりふさわしいと思われる書体の読みやすさをテストした。そのテストでは混同しやすい文字や単語を画面に短時間表示し、被験者に読んだ内容を復唱させ、その返答時の自信度と速度を分析した。この調査結果を共有することはより多くの人の書体デザインや書籍デザインにおいて有用であると考える。