Letter fitting is usually described as a qualitative facet of type design, even though the production of digital fonts are boiled down to numeric side with bearings and kerning adjustments. Moreover, the qualitative nature of letter fitting makes it challenging to compare the letter fitting of typefaces or to assess spacing problems in objective terms.… Continue reading Quantifying the assessment of letter spacing
In 2015, Prof. Dr. Ann Bessemans founded the READSEARCH legibility research group at PXL-MAD School of Arts and Hasselt University in Belgium. She also serves as program director of the school’s international Master program in reading type and typography. READSEARCH provides a unique environment bringing together design researchers, designers, scientists, students, and stakeholders through research,… Continue reading READSEARCH: Case studies into experimental typography
The growth of multimodal linguistics in recent years has led to an increase in the study of the visual aspects of language by non-designers. Such a study has led to the analysis and description of a number of variables within typography that may seem self-evident to the typographically engaged professional, yet unnoticeable in other fields.… Continue reading Typography and Linguistics in Making Sense of Visible Language
Chinatown is a Chinese typographic translation of the trademarks in a graphical way. It’s a carefully arranged series of artworks showcasing 20 well-known western brand logos with maintained visual and narrative continuity. Sooner or later, most major global brands will obviously need to adjust their meaning based on a translation to demonstrate alignment with local… Continue reading Chinatown, Chinese Translation of Trademarks
As part of the Plantin Institute of Typography’s expert class type design course under the roof of the Museum Plantin-Moretus, a group of international students examined models by French Renaissance punchcutter Robert Granjon as the basis for a digital revival. The research questioned whether there is cross-standardization between the roman and italic models of Granjon.… Continue reading Renaissance Type Systematization and Digital Frameworks
This presentation focuses on the analysis of letterings found in architectural drawings from a corpus of 170 design plans from seven major architects based in São Paulo, Brazil between 1925 and 1955. It takes into account the letters used to convey information, and also those designed to be part of the buildings. The letters and… Continue reading Art Déco Letterings in Architectural Drawings from São Paulo, Brazil
Erik van Blokland’s presentation about a small experiment on digitisation of letterforms. This is a presentation about a small experiment on digitization of letterforms. A single scanned image was shared with type students, colleagues, professionals and interested designers. The analysis of the data brings some interesting results.
Mariko Takagi talks about a research project started in 2011 to bridge the two “contrary” writing systems by typographic means. From the 2013 ATypI conference in Amsterdam. As soon as we visualise language in a written form we make use of typographic methods, wittingly or unwittingly. It starts by selecting a typeface, setting the font… Continue reading Hanzi-Graphy
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
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