OUGD403 - Studio Brief 2 - Research

For this brief we had to create a font 'Based on one of Müeller-Brockmanns classic and lead typefaces, create your own bespoke typeface, which should effectively communicate your given adjective.' To begin I created a mind map of my own interpretation of angry then looked up the meaning for angry and added onto my original thoughts. This lead to a ton of different meaning however they did not mean much to me so I had a dig around online. When I had a look into angry graphic design online I found an interesting site publishing work created as a dig back at clients, using ridiculous quotes they had said. I liked this idea of designers frustrated with there clients however I struggle take it much further than the idea of having a similar quote within my specimen to present the work. With maybe a name such as ‘the client pleaser’.  This idea for me lacked depth and I decided to move on leaving this as another option.  I then decided to look into illustration and how people can make these aggressive, I came across by Gemma O’brien charging into battle. This gave me the idea to create a font which can be used in a similar manor for game console covers or maybe film posters. This would mean taking a more literal approach to the word similar to how Gemma O’brien has made the font look battered and damaged this gives it a look like its been in a conflict which has connotations to war, anger, fighting. This Idea all came about relatively quickly so I decided to put them to the side and researched slightly more.   Gemma O' Brein Looking into Type.

I read Müeller-Brockmanns book Grid Systems to get a better understanding of the 6 fonts we could chose from this help me to make a more informed decision when choosing my font to begin. I was veering more towards a San-serif as research showed this was better font for reading however I decided to look into some serif fonts also.

 Caslon, was designed and cut by William Caslon, It is slightly bigger than Garamond and I would say slightly bolder. As it has thicker strokes matched with thin lines, however both fonts are similar in form. 

Garamond, Was designed and cut in paris in 1535 by Claude Garamond. It was the first to be created in Roman and italic style.  Something I did not realise about these fonts is how old they are I learnt in a lecture on fonts that Garamond is one of the first fonts ever created that we still use today, this is fascinating that it has lasted as long as 485 years. This shows much could be learnt from garamond from its harmonious clear strokes which have ment it lasting till present day. It as been made available for film setting and adapted to a light, semi bold and bold style. The light face is often used in small sizes for marginalia and captions to pictures. The semi-bold, bold and italic styles are mostly used as display faces, even larger bodies are used for titles. Ideas that come to mind with this font would be old battle posters, tending not to fit my purpose but still a grand font. 

Univers, Designed by Adrian Frutiger from 1957-1963 has become one of the most widely used San-serif faces. The face is available in light, medium, semi-bold, bold, Roman and italic sizes. This makes it a good choice for designers due to the versatility. Its used in a wide range of application such as corporate branding, sign age, maps, standardized testing and consumer electronics devices.  Univers is also used on tests and exams in the UK’  This is one of the fonts I am considering to use within this project due to its applications as they relate to the applications of my font ideas. They are all places where a dyslexic version would be very beneficial especially in tests and exam. This in particular is a plus as I am aiming in this direction, to aid students in reading. 

 Berthold is a font created in the image of 19th century fonts. It has almost equal thickness strokes horizontally and vertically through out. Its interesting form means it was used particularly in industrial advertising. I am not keen on using this font as I am after a font with stronger use of strokes as I want each letter form to have its own personality to increase individuality. I feel the consistency of strokes is nice aesthetically but lacks in difference. 

Helvetica’s letter forms were based around Berthold. Characteristics of the font are the horizontally cut ends of letter such as c, e, g etc this is in contrast to Bertholds, as they are cut radially. This improves legiblity, This characterists stuck out to me. I feel that helvetica’s bold insynce forms create a personality which creates a big statement making it popular font in the world of advertisement. The curves all flow very similarly together throughout this creates movement within the font. However this can be tricky for people with dyslexia to read as letter forms are so similar. Causing mirror an example would be the n which is a unside-down u. 

 The impact of Helvetica. From Helvetica Documentary.









So looking at the three san-serifs I had to chose from I decided on univers my reasoning for this is because its used within UK exams and testing as its preferred for the clear distinction between similar characters, These are all aspects i want within my typeface this gives me a perfect starting platform as i can just simply increase distinction within the letters. It is created to have shorter ascenders and descenders just by increasing these I can make it more readable to my target audience, this means from just subtle changes i can increase important characteristics needed to fit my new typeface. On top of this it is widely used in advertising something my font could be used in as an addition contribute. 

Ted talk by Mathew Carter on Typefaces

Feedback lead me into thinking about what can cause anger, then I had a think at what sometimes causes me to get angry one thing that came to mind was public speaking or reading in general as this is something I struggle with due to dyslexia. This sparked an idea maybe there is a way to aid this through typeface. So I decided to research into this with the question in mind 'Can typefaces have distuqiushed features to help people with dyslexia read then easier'. The answer was yes, so I began to look into this with more depth. 

To begin what is dyslexia?

Britain has two million severely dyslexic individuals, including some 375,000 schoolchildren. 10% of people using ‘Romance’ languages are coping with a reading difficulty. Dyslexia is a combination of abilities and difficulties that affect the learning process, displaying a wide range of difficulties. Dyslexia can occur despite normal intellectual ability and teaching, and it is independent of socio-economic or language background. The British Dyslexia Association

Research showed it is also estimated 1 in 10 people suffer from dyslexia making this a important matter. Reading being problems people would have is Letter’s mirroring so for instance a b would be seen as a d. Ways around this are to increase individuality between letters, so adding a inverting a stroke on the d or maybe increasing stroke weight at certain points. Feature which increase legibility  are things such as increasing ascenders and descenders b, d, f, h, k, l, t, etc. Increasing the x height of each letter-form Rounded g as in handwriting. Letter-spacing, e.g. r, n together rn should not look like m, (‘modern’ may scan as, or sound like, ‘modem’.) My primary research I did was print all of these fonts out with the sentence, the fox jumps over the lazy dog and then timed myself reading each one. I then also picked the one I found most easy. 

For my secondary research I looked at two main pieces on the subject: Robs font thesis on the creation of font selxiad and a study The best fonts for dylexia by Luz RelloNLP & Web Research Groups Universitat Pompeu Fabra Barcelona, Spain. The thesis by Dr. Robert Hillier for his font Sylexiad. A typeface for the adult dyslexic reader. In relation to creating a name for my font I liked the name of this I thought it was clever, as is dyslexia jumbled up, to imitate somebody with dyslexia reading it. This sparked ideas for my font poster recreating something which would be seeing through the eyes of someone who would struggle with the issues I am focusing on. I found sources of Research from the 80’s and compared them to more current research and theory’s.  “Sans-serif type is intrinsically less legible than seriffed type” (McLean, 1980, p.44). more recent studies contradict this point. A study in Spain says San-serif was both more legibly and readable. Readability and comprehensibility were analysed via eye-tracking and comprehension tests, respectively, using the latter as a control variable. “Well-designed Roman upper and lower-case is easier to read than any of its variants, e.g. italic, bold, caps, expanded or condensed versions” (McLean, 1980, p.44). From the same study I found information which back this point up. It said that San-serif, Roman, mono-spaced fonts were significantly more readable to people with dyslexia. ‘Words should be set close to each other (about as far apart as the width of the letter ‘i’); and there should be more space between the lines than the words” (McLean, 1980, p.45).’ I will take this into consideration as I have found research backing that the spacing between letters should be large however nothing on the actual word spacing. I found earlier studies tended to contradict new studies however some points did match up and these I will keep in mind while designing my new font. From newer theory’s I learnt the word shape is no longer important because now the dominant thinking is that individual letter shapes play the lead role when somebody try s to read. From this I know that I will need to create each letter form to be more individual. This could be a problem however as it may mess with the flow of reading although i am sure there are ways around this. 

My second body of research was a study in Spain. Researchers published results that determined which fonts had the best readability for individuals with dyslexia. It was based on 48 subjects aged 11-50, reading 12 texts with 12 different fonts. Reading performance was best when sans serif, mono-spaced and Roman fonts where used, Italic fonts significantly impaired readers. From this info I learnt the best ways to increase reading ease are sans serif, mono-spaced and Roman. So I decided to  incorporate this into my first typeface drafts. I was worried about mono-space however because I felt this would make each letter seem more similar something I was trying to avoid. The study also showed OpenDyslexic a free font specifically designed with dyslexia in mind but in fact it did not help. The study showed that when recording reading speed OpenDyslexic came near the slowest. I took this into consideration when creating my font. Helvetica, Courier, Arial, Verdana and Computer Modern where all recommended over open dyslexic but it seemed people tended to chose fonts based on preference rather than actual ability to read however apart from opendyslexic no fonts created to help with dyslexia where actually used. 

Dyslexie Was the second font I looked at. This was a massive help within my project as it showed a range of ways in which a font can be manipulated to increase the readability. However I felt the font looked slightly messy with a hand written feel this is something I wish to avoid. Id like to create a smart font with subtle alterations which from research I have learnt can help.(http://www.dyslexiefont.com)

A study showed that monospaced is preferred however this contradicts each letter looking individual and it makes each letter look slightly similar. These are some monospaced typefaces I looked into. 

Erik Spiekermann -https://vimeo.com/19429698

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http://www.robsfonts.com/Resources/thesis.pdf (research into dyslexia)

(http://alexpoole.info/blog/which-are-more-legible-serif-or-sans-serif-typefaces/)
Webpage on which is more legible serif or san-serif


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gqus1wEbmA (video on dyeliza type face)

http://blog.dyslexia.com/good-fonts-for-dyslexia-an-experimental-study/

http://dyslexiahelp.umich.edu/sites/default/files/good_fonts_for_dyslexia_study.pdf ( study in spain\)

http://www.dyslexic.com/fonts

http://www.readregular.com/english/regular.html ( font created with dyslexia in mind)


The impact of Helvetica.
http://dyslexiahelp.umich.edu/sites/default/files/good_fonts_for_dyslexia_study.pdf 
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