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hinting is critical for producing clear, legible text. The best hinting is done by hand on a character-by-character and point size–by–point size basis—a tedious and time-consuming process.
It still, however, comes down to the typeface design. “TrueType instructions [hinting] are not universally applied,” explains Berlow. “The underlying design of each letterform is essential, especially in rendering environments like Mac OS X that ignore hinting data.”
What’s available?
The majority of the new legibility fonts are based on typefaces already in these foundries’ libraries. The Font Bureau, Hoefler & Co. and Monotype all offer about a dozen families of their most popular text typefaces as optimized legibility designs. The Font Bureau and Monotype provide a modest suite of two weights—plus italics—for most families, and Hoefler & Co. provides six weights plus italics. Fonts from all three foundries enjoy large character sets, supporting most Western European and several Central European languages; Monotype is the only provider of non-Latin scripts. According to Chahine, “Monotype has several non-Latin scripts, including complex scripts like Chinese and Arabic. For example, M Ying Hei is very well suited for on-screen usage. We have even tested it in comparison to several other typefaces of the same style, and it came out on top.”
In addition to modifying existing typefaces for eText, Monotype
released the Burlingame, Daytona and Joanna Sans Nova families to address small screens’ text legibility issues.
It’s still about good typography
Even when armed with today’s generation of legibility fonts, designers still must make things work. “I’ve found that interactive designers often forget the enormous population with reading difficulties,” cautions Matteson. “Issues like dyslexia—affecting one in ten—the need for reading glasses and simply the glare of reading outdoors should be considered. When talking to designers, I suggest ample use of white space to reduce visual crowding of icons, text and buttons; a limited number of type styles to establish user interface hierarchy; a modest point size versus a fashionably small one; and typefaces with open forms—humanist styles like Frutiger, Verdana and Open Sans.”
Web designers have lived with text legibility issues since the small palette of web-safe system fonts were replaced by dynam- ically downloadable fonts. But now, interactive design has moved far beyond the World Wide Web. More and more designers are developing textual communication interfaces and displays for small-screen devices. The new crop of legibility designs can enable graphic communicators to create text copy as typographically rewarding on screen as it is in print. ca
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