Do designers show categorical perception of typefaces?

Readers need to easily discriminate between different letters, so typefaces are designed to make these differences distinctive. But there is also a uniformity of style within a typeface. These styles are recognised by typographic designers and may be categorised to enable more efficient discrimination among typefaces. The manner in which designers perceive typefaces is explored using the paradigm of Categorical Perception (CP). A continuum of fonts is created by interpolating between two typefaces and two tasks (identification and discrimination) are used to test for CP. As the application of CP to typefaces is a new approach, various methodological issues are pursued. The experiments reveal that the conditions required to demonstrate CP are quite specific and CP was only evident in Times and Helvetica and not Garamond and Bodoni. Possible reasons for this difference are the characteristics of the two typefaces and their context of use. Speculation as to the purpose of CP in non-designers raises the under-researched question of how we identify letters in different typefaces when reading.

Characterizing typographic expertise: do we process typefaces like faces?

Studies of face recognition and discrimination provide a rich source of data and debate on the nature of their processing, in particular through using inverted faces. This study draws parallels between the features of typefaces and faces, as letters share a basic configuration, regardless of typeface, that could be seen as similar to faces. Typeface discrimination is compared using paragraphs of upright letters and inverted letters at three viewing durations. Based on previously reported effects of expertise, the prediction that designers would be less accurate when letters are inverted, whereas nondesigners would have similar performance in both orientations, was confirmed. A proposal is made as to which spatial relations between typeface components constitute holistic and configural processing, posited as the basis for better discrimination of the typefaces of upright letters. Such processing may characterize designers’ perceptual abilities, acquired through training.

Brill Greek, Adobe Arno Pro, Adobe Text/Brevier Greek typefaces

Typeface design: a series of collaborative projects commissioned by Adobe, Inc. and Brill to develop extensive polytonic Greek typefaces. The two Adobe typefaces can be seen as extension of previous research for the Garamond Premier Pro family (2005), and concludes a research theme started in 1998 with work for Adobe’s Minion Pro Greek. These typefaces together define the state of the art for text-intensive Greek typesetting for wide character set texts (from classical texts, to poetry, to essays, to prose). They serve both as exemplar for other developers, and as vehicles for developing the potential of Greek text typography, for example with the parallel inclusion of monotonic and polytonic characters, detailed localised punctuation options, fluid handling of case-conversion issues, and innovative options such as accented small caps (originally requested by bibliographers, and subsequently rolled out to a general user base). The Brill typeface (for the established academic publisher) has an exceptionally wide character set to cover several academic disciplines, and is intended to differentiate sufficiently from its partner Latin typeface, while maintaining a clear texture in both offset and low-resolution print-on-demand reproduction. This work involved substantial amounts of testing and modifying the design, especially of diacritics, to maintain clarity the readability of unfamiliar words. All together these typefaces form a study in how Greek typesetting meets contemporary typographic requirements, while resonating with historically accurate styles, where these are present. Significant research in printing archives helped to identify appropriate styles, as well as originate variants that are coherent stylistically, even when historical equivalents were absent.

CUP Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon

Document design and typeface design: A typographic specification for a new Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon by CUP, accompanied by typefaces modified for the specific typographic requirements of the text. The Lexicon is a substantial (over 1400 pages) publication for HE students and academics intended to complement Liddell-Scott (the standard reference for classical Greek since the 1850s), and has been in preparation for over a decade. The typographic appearance of such works has changed very little since the original editions, largely to the lack of suitable typefaces: early digital proofs of the Lexicon utilised directly digitised versions of historical typefaces, making the entries difficult to navigate, and the document uneven in typographic texture. Close collaboration with the editors of the Lexicon, and discussion of the historical precedents for such documents informed the design at all typographic levels to achieve a highly reader-friendly results that propose a model for this kind of typography. Uniquely for a work of this kind, typeface design decisions were integrated into the wider document design specification. A rethinking of the complex typography for Greek and English based on historical editions as well as equivalent bilingual reference works at this level (from OUP, CUP, Brill, Mondadori, and other publishers) led a redefinition of multi-script typeface pairing for the specific context, taking into account recent developments in typeface design. Specifically, the relevant weighting of elements within each entry were redefined, as well as the typographic texture of type styles across the two scripts. In details, Greek typefaces were modified to emphasise clarity and readability, particularly of diacritics, at very small sizes. The relative weights of typefaces typeset side-by-side were fine-tuned so that the visual hierarchy of the entires was unambiguous despite the dense typesetting.

The influence of serifs on 'h' and 'i': useful knowledge from design-led scientific research

The typographical naivety of much scientific legibility research has caused designers to question the value of the research and the results. Examining the reasons underlying this questioning, the paper discusses the importance of designers being more accepting of scientific findings, and why legibility investigations have value. To demonstrate how typographic knowledge can be incorporated into the design of studies to increase their validity, the paper reports on a new investigation into the role of serifs when viewed at a distance. The experiment looks into the identification of the lowercase letters ‘j’, ‘i’, ‘l’, ‘b’, ‘h’, ‘n’, ‘u’, and ‘a’ in isolation. All of the letters originate in the same typeface and are presented in one version with serifs and one version without serifs. Although the experiment found no overall legibility difference between the sans serif and the serif versions, the study showed that letters with serifs placed on the vertical extremes were more legible at a distance than the same letters in a sans serif. These findings can therefore provide specific guidance on the design of individual letters and demonstrate the product of collaboration between designer and scientist on the planning, implementation, and analysis of the study.

Beyond Latin

An edited discussion of issues surrounding non-Latin typeface development

Reading journeys

Presentation of work by the MA Typeface Design cohort 2014–15

Paul Renner: the art of typography

The first study, in any language, of this German typographer and type designer. Renner’s work exemplifies central themes in German culture in the first half of the twentieth century. Starting as an artist and book designer in the Munich cultural renaissance, he was an early and prominent member of the Deutscher Werkbund. In the 1920s Renner worked in Frankfurt, one of the centres of socially-engaged modernism; around this time he began work on his enduring typeface, Futura. Moving to Munich, he ran the printing school that included Jan Tschichold among its teachers. In the crisis of 1933 he was detained and then dismissed from his post. Living through the Nazi years in inner emigration, Renner emer­ged as a voice of experience and reason in postwar debates.

History of the monotype corporation

This important new publication charts the history of the British Monotype Corporation in its significant years from 1897 to 1992. Its three sections cover the Corporation’s business history, typeface design history, and the technical history of Monotype’s composing machines. Written and edited by leading business and type industry experts, this is an indispensable reference for typographers and type designers, and for technology and business historians.

The Poems of T. S. Eliot [Book design by Paul Luna]

Book design, consisting of typographic design and composition formatting, and commissioning of custom scripting and custom typeface design to implement the book's typography.

A reappraisal of Baskerville's Greek types

Ιn the eighteenth century the printing of Greek texts continued to be central to scholarship and discourse. The typography of Greek texts could be characterised as a continuation of French models from the sixteenth century, with a gradual dilution of the complexity of ligatures and abbreviations, mostly through printers in the Low Countries. In Britain, Greek printing was dominated by the university presses, which reproduced conservatively the continental models – exemplified by Oxford's Fell types, which were Dutch adaptations of earlier French models. Hindsight allows us to identify a meaningful development in the Greek types cut by Alexander Wilson for the Foulis Press in Glasgow, but we can argue that in the middle of the eighteenth century Baskerville was considering Greek printing the typographic environment was ripe for a new style of Greek types. The opportunity to cut the types for a New Testament (in an twin edition that included a generous octavo and a large quarto version) would seem perfect for showcasing Baskerville's capacity for innovation. His Greek type maintained the cursive ductus of earlier models, but abandoned complex ligatures and any hint of scribal flourish. He homogenised the modulation of the letter strokes and the treatment of terminals, and normalised the horizontal alignments of all letters. Although the strokes are in some letters too delicate, the narrow set of the style composes a consistent, uniform texture that is a clean break from contemporaneous models. The argument is made that this is the first Greek typeface that can be described as fully typographic in the context of the technology of the time. It sets a pattern that was to be followed, without acknowledgement, by Richard Porson nearly a century and a half later. The typeface received little praise by typographic historians, and was condemned by Victor Scholderer in his retrospective of Greek typography. A survey of typeface reviews in the surrounding decades establishes that the commentators were mostly reproducing the views of an arbitrary typographic orthodoxy, for which only types with direct references to Renaissance models were acceptable. In these comments we detect a bias against someone considered an arriviste in the scholarly printing establishment, as well as a conservative attitude to typographic innovation.

Developing Optical Character Recoginition for Ethiopic Scripts

The Amharic language is the Official language of over 70 million people mainly in Ethiopia. An extensive literature survey and the government report reveal no single Amharic character recognition is found in the country. The Amharic script has 33 basic characters each with seven orders giving 310 distinct characters, including numbers and punctuation symbols. The characters are visually similar; there is a typeface, but no capitalization. Beside this there is no any standard font to use the language in the computer but they use different fonts developed by different stakeholders without keeping a standard on their own way and interest and this create a problem of incompatibility between different fonts and documents.This project is to investigate the reason why Amharic optical character recognition is not addressed by local and international researchers and developers and finally to develop Amharic optical character recognition uses the features and facilities of Microsoft windows Vista or 7 using Unicode standard.

Mikrotypografins inverkan på läsbarheten hos tryckt brödtext : En forskningsöversikt

Hur en texts typografiska utformning påverkar hur enkel den blir att läsa är en fråga som har sysselsatt forskare under lång tid. Förhoppningen har varit att få en bättre förståelse för hur läsning går till och hur man bäst bör sätta text för att underlätta för läsaren. Ett problem har dock varit att skapa medvetenhet om forskningens resultat bland dem som arbetar med att sätta text. Tanken med detta examensarbete var att skapa en överblick av forskningen, med inriktning på hur mikrotypografin, det vill säga den typografi som berör detaljer i textens utformning, påverkar läsbarheten i brödtext. Efter litteratursökningar valdes tio vetenskapligt publicerade empiriska studier på detta område ut. Artiklarna beskrevs och diskuterades med hänsyn till deras metodik och deras resultat. Följande mikrotypografiska faktorer behandlades i studierna: skillnader i läsbarhet mellan typsnitt, x-höjdens och teckenavståndets inverkan på läsbarheten, skillnader i läsbarhet mellan gemener, versaler och kursiv text samt skillnader i läsbarhet mellan olika bokstavsformer. Slutsatsen var att forskningen kring läsbarhet ger intressanta inblickar i hur typografin inverkar på läsprocessen. Det begränsade antalet studier på varje område samt brist på studier utförda på svenska gör det dock svårt att skapa konkreta riktlinjer för hur text bör sättas. Vidare konstaterades att studier utförda i samarbete mellan forskare och typografiskt kunniga vore en möjlig metod att sprida kunskap till de typografiska yrkena och öka sannolikheten för praktisk tillämpning av forskningsresultaten.

Layout och typografi i vetenskapliga artiklar : En kartläggning av konventioner gällande grafisk formgivning inom matematik, medicin och utbildningsvetenskap

En deskriptiv visuell innehållsanalys genomfördes med en korpus bestående av vetenskapliga artiklar från 30 topprankade tidskrifter jämnt fördelade på de tre disciplinerna matematik, medicin och utbildningsvetenskap, med syfte att undersöka om det fanns ett samband mellan tidskrifternas disciplintillhörighet och den grafiska formgivningen. Kartläggningen omfattade layout (bl.a. sidformat, spalter, marginalstorlek, användning av grafiska element, placering av tabeller, figurer och pagina) och typografiskt utseende hos titel, rubriker, brödtext och abstrakt (t.ex. teckenstorlek, textjustering, teckengrovlek, typsnitt, färg och radavstånd). Resultaten visar att disciplinerna använde olika men även gemensamma konventioner i sitt grafiska utseende. Matematik uppvisade enkelspaltig layout med liten typografisk variation, genomgående användning av typsnitt från familjen Transitional eller Transitional/Didone för hela dokumentet, avsaknad av kulört färg och sällan användning av grafiska element. Medicin uppvisade större variation med användning av kulört färg, icke-centrerad typografi med både sansseriff- och seriff-typsnitt, grafiska element och ramar som förstärker det ofta använda dubbelspaltiga gridsystemet. Utbildningsvetenskap uppvisade en grafisk design som återfanns i båda disciplinerna, men påminde mest om matematik till utseendet. Kodbok ingår i sin helhet som bilaga. Uppsatsen i sig är delvis formgiven med utgångspunkt i de erhållna resultaten.

Das moderne Buch: Harry Graf Kesslers Ästhetik der Lebenskunst im Spiegel der Großherzog Wilhelm Ernst Ausgabe deutscher Klassiker

Die Großherzog Wilhelm Ernst Ausgabe deutscher Klassiker wurde seit 1904 bis in die Zwanziger Jahre hinein im Insel Verlag in Leipzig publiziert. Die Buchreihe hat nicht nur für den Verlag und die Druckerei Poeschel in der sie gedruckt wurde eine ganze Reihe von Neuerungen nach sich gezogen, auch für den deutschen Buchmarkt hat die Klassikerausgabe einen Meilenstein bedeutet. Sie hat einige Eigenschaften des Taschenbuches vorweggenommen. Sie orientierte sich an der Qualität bibliophiler Buchpublikationen, aber war dennoch preislich erschwinglich. Zeitgenössische Klassikerausgaben erschienen zumeist mit einem Kommentar. Nicht so die Großherzog Wilhelm Ernst Ausgabe. Der Text wurde zwar von führenden Wissenschaftlern editiert, aber sie war dennoch unkommentiert. Der Text war in einer Jenson-Antiqua gesetzt obwohl die Debatte um individuell gestaltete Künstlerschriften und die Diskussion um die als deutsche Schrift begriffene Fraktur unter den wichtigsten Protagonisten des deutschen Buchgewerbes ihren Höhepunkt noch nicht erreicht hatte. Ziel für die Klassikerausgabe war darüber hinaus, das zur Jahrhundertwende leicht angestaubte Image der Stadt Weimar aufzupolieren. Über das Patronat des Großherzogs hinaus hätte man die Gewinne aus dem Verkauf der Bücher der Permanenten Ausstellung für die Anschaffung von modernen Kunstobjekten zur Verfügung stellen wollen, die unter der Leitung von Harry Graf Kessler stand. Sieht man den Inhalt der Werke der in der Klassikerreihe erschienen Dichter Goethe, Schiller und Körner in einem ästhetischen Kontext mit dem der Philosophen Schopenhauer und Kant, wird im Spiegel der Formalästhetik der Klassikerausgabe Graf Kesslers Bildungs- und Kulturbegriff erkennbar, der sich in den Jahren nach der Jahrhundertwende zu seinem Lebenskunstideal verdichtete. Der zerrütteten Existenz der Zeitgenossen, wie Friedrich Nietzsche sie beschrieben hatte, sollte der Inhalt der Ausgabe in seiner modernen Form eine moderne Wertehaltung entgegensetzen. Die Lektüre der Klassiker sollte den deutschen Philister „entkrampfen“ und ihm ein Stück der verloren geglaubten Lebensfreude wieder zurück bringen, in dem dieser auch die Facetten des Lebensleids als normal hinnehmen und akzeptieren lernte. Die Klassikerausgabe repräsentierte aus diesem Grund auch den kulturellen und politischen Reformwillen und die gesellschaftlichen Vorstellungen die der Graf für ein modernes Deutschland als überfällig erachtete. Die Buchreihe war aus diesem Grund auch ein politisches Statement gegen die Beharrungskräfte im deutschen Kaiserreich. Die Klassikerreihe wurde in der buchhistorischen Forschung zwar als bedeutender Meilenstein charakterisiert und als „wichtiges“ oder gar „revolutionäres“ Werk der Zeit hervorgehoben, die Ergebnisse der Forschung kann man überspitzt aber in der Aussage zusammenfassen, dass es sich bei der Großherzog Wilhelm Ernst Ausgabe um einen „zufälligen Glückstreffer“ deutscher Buchgestaltung zu handeln scheint. Zumindest lassen die Aussagen, die bisher in dieser Hinsicht gemacht wurden, keine eindeutige Einordnung zu, außer vielleicht der, dass die Klassiker von der englischen Lebensreform inspiriert wurden und Henry van de Velde und William Morris einen Einfluss auf ihre äußere Form hatten. Gerade die Gedankenansätze dieser Beiden nutzte Graf Kessler aber für eigene Überlegungen, die ihn schließlich auch zu eigenen Vorstellungen von idealer Buchgestaltung brachten. Da für Kessler auch Gebrauchsgegenstände Kunst sein konnten, wird das Konzept der Klassikerausgabe bis zur Umsetzung in ihrer `bahnbrechenden´ Form in das ideengeschichtliche und ästhetische Denken des Grafen eingeordnet. Die Klassiker werden zwar in buchhistorischen Einzeluntersuchungen bezüglich ihrer Komponenten, dem Dünndruckpapier, ihrem Einband oder der Schrifttype exponiert. In buchwissenschaftlichen Überblicksdarstellungen wird ihr Einfluss hingegen weniger beachtet, denn verschiedene Kritiker bezogen sie seit ihrem ersten Erscheinen nicht als deutsches Kulturgut mit ein, denn sie lehnten sowohl die englischen Mitarbeiter Emery Walker, Edward Johnston, Eric Gill und Douglas Cockerell wie auch ihre Gestaltung als „welsche“ Buchausgabe ab. Richtig ist, die Großherzog Wilhelm Ernst Ausgabe hatte dieselbe Funktion wie die von Graf Kessler in Weimar konzipierten Kunstausstellungen und die dortige Kunstschule unter der Leitung seines Freundes Henry van de Velde. Auch das für Weimar geplante Theater, das unter der Leitung von Hugo von Hofmannsthal hätte stehen sollen und die Großherzog Wilhelm Ernst Schule, hätten dieselben Ideen der Moderne mit anderen Mitteln transportieren sollen, wie die Großherzog Wilhelm Ernst Ausgabe deutscher Klassiker.