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Showing posts from May, 2017

Comic Sans Is (Generally) Lousy: Letters and Reading Challenges

Specimen of the typeface Comic Sans. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Personally, I support everyone being able to type and read in whatever typefaces individuals prefer. If you like Comic Sans , then change the font while you type or read online content. If you like Helvetica , use that. The digital world is not print. You can change typefaces . You can change their sizes. You can change colors. There is no reason to argue over what you use to type or to read as long as I can use typefaces that I like. Now, as a design researcher? I'll tell you that type matters a lot to both the biological act of reading and the psychological act of constructing meaning. Statistically, there are "better" and "worse" type for conveying messages. There are also typefaces that are more legible and more readable. Sometimes, legibility does not help readability, either, as a type with overly distinct letters (legibility) can hinder word shapes and decoding (readability).