Comparing the legibility of six ClearType typefaces to Verdana and Times New Roman

Chaparro, Barbara S.; Shaikh, A. Dawn; Chaparro, Alex; Merkle, Edgar C.

doi:10.1075/idj.18.1.04cha

Cited by 17 publications

(16 citation statements)

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“…Some of the earliest psychophysical investigations concerned the legibility of the English alphabet (Sanford 1888). These methods have since been carried over into modern investigations of digital typography (Fox, Chaparro, and Merkle 2007; Beier and Larson 2010; Chaparro et al 2010). Most of these legibility investigations concern broad visual or cognitive features, such as size (Huang, Patrick Rau, and Liu 2009; Legge and Bigelow 2011; Piepenbrock, Mayr, and Buchner 2013), digit span (Chen and Chien 2005), lexical frequency (Grainger and Segui 1990; Yan et al 2006), spatial frequency (Paterson, McGowan, and Jordan 2013), visual crowding (Pelli et al 2007; Pelli and Tillman 2008; Wang et al 2008) and reading in peripheral vision (Legge, Mansfield, and Chung 2001; He, Legge, and Deyue 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A small letter may have a total width of 6–8 pixels, and the letter’s strokes may be a single pixel or less in thickness. Therefore, factors such as the smoothing algorithm used and the resolution of the display become crucial factors impacting legibility (Chaparro et al 2010). At the same time, it may be the case that some typefaces, owing to their intrinsic design characteristics, may scale better than others.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Utilising psychophysical techniques to investigate the effects of age, typeface design, size and display polarity on glance legibility

et al. 2016

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Psychophysical research on text legibility has historically investigated factors such as size, colour and contrast, but there has been relatively little direct empirical evaluation of typographic design itself, particularly in the emerging context of glance reading. In the present study, participants performed a lexical decision task controlled by an adaptive staircase method. Two typefaces, a ‘humanist’ and ‘square grotesque’ style, were tested. Study I examined positive and negative polarities, while Study II examined two text sizes. Stimulus duration thresholds were sensitive to differences between typefaces, polarities and sizes. Typeface also interacted significantly with age, particularly for conditions with higher legibility thresholds. These results are consistent with previous research assessing the impact of the same typefaces on interface demand in a simulated driving environment. This simplified methodology of assessing legibility differences can be adapted to investigate a wide array of questions relevant to typographic and interface designs. Practitioner Summary: A method is described for rapidly investigating relative legibility of different typographical features. Results indicate that during glance-like reading induced by the psychophysical technique and under the lighting conditions considered, humanist-style type is significantly more legible than a square grotesque style, and that black-on-white text is significantly more legible than white-on-black.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Utilising psychophysical techniques to investigate the effects of age, typeface design, size and display polarity on glance legibility

et al. 2016

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“…The results of Chaparro, et al (2010) provided evidence that certain features influence character legibility. Unfortunately, the set of typefaces examined was small and fairly homogeneous.…”

Section: Purposementioning

confidence: 91%

“…Chaparro, Shaikh, Chaparro, and Merkle (2010) investigated whether these typefaces were more legible than the traditional typefaces Times New Roman and Verdana. The researchers tested the legibility of the typefaces using a short-exposure method of individual characters.…”

Section: Font Rendering Techniquesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Examination of the legibility of isolated characters of onscreen typefaces

Chaparro¹,

Merkle²,

Fox³

et al. 2011

IDJ

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This study reports on the legibility of digits, symbols, and letters from 20 onscreen typefaces. Participants were asked to identify individual characters after a brief exposure and performance was recorded. Classification tree analysis was used to examine the influence of specific character features on legibility. Features included attributes such as height, width, weight, stroke variation, contrast, and complexity. Results reveal the most influential features for six commonly confused characters (zero, one, "e", "l", ÷, and $). The use of classification tree analysis appears to be promising for typographers in determining the limits of typeface features and for practitioners who must choose an optimal typeface for a particular use.

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“…A small letter may have a total width of 6-8 pixels, and the letter's strokes may be a single pixel or less in thickness. Therefore, fonts are often smoothed to improve their appearance, but this can lead to blurring of the typeface (Chaparro, Shaikh, Chaparroa, & Merkle, 2010).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Incredible Shrinking Letter: How Font Size Affects the Legibility of Text Viewed in Brief Glances

Dobres

Parikhal

Wean

et al. 2015

Proceedings of the 8th International Driving Symposium on Human Factors in Driver Assessment, Training, and Vehicle Design: Dri

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Summary:As in-vehicle interfaces have become miniature computers with userfacing LCD screens, the complexities of designing for them have increased tremendously. Given their safety-critical nature, designers must carefully consider every aspect of the vehicle's digital interface. Recent research has suggested that even the typeface used to display the interface's text can have significant impacts on driver behaviors such as total off-road glance time and secondary task completion time. Here we outline a psychophysical method for rapidly assessing the glance-based legibility of two different typefaces (a "humanist" and a "square grotesque") presented in two different sizes (3mm and 4mm). Consistent with previous research, we find that humanist type is more legible than square grotesque. We also find that text is empirically less legible at 3mm compared to 4mm, and that this effect is especially pronounced for the square grotesque typeface. Legibility thresholds were also found to increase linearly with age, more than doubling across the age range studied. We hypothesize that the square grotesque's intrinsic design characteristics cause it to scale poorly at small sizes and lose important details, especially in suboptimal display conditions.

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Comparing the legibility of six ClearType typefaces to Verdana and Times New Roman

Cited by 17 publications

References 0 publications

Utilising psychophysical techniques to investigate the effects of age, typeface design, size and display polarity on glance legibility

Utilising psychophysical techniques to investigate the effects of age, typeface design, size and display polarity on glance legibility

Examination of the legibility of isolated characters of onscreen typefaces

The Incredible Shrinking Letter: How Font Size Affects the Legibility of Text Viewed in Brief Glances

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