A Font To Remember?

[catbert]

From the website:
Sans Forgetica is a font designed using the principles of cognitive psychology to help you to better remember your study notes. … Sans Forgetica is more difficult to read than most typefaces – and that’s by design. The 'desirable difficulty' you experience when reading information formatted in Sans Forgetica prompts your brain to engage in deeper processing.
http://sansforgetica.rmit (free download for Mac and PC)

 

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Years ago, I unwittingly developed a similar impediment to legibility — my handwriting.

[amberleadavis]

Okay, that's pretty nifty. I was proud of the font with my handwriting, but this is better.

[inkstainedruth]

Okay. Clearly it's designed to make your brain "fill in" the missing parts of the letters (I know there's a technical term for the phenomenon but it's been too many years since my Intro to Psychology class in college -- and I never actually went to the lectures, just read the chapters and took the online quizzes on one of the computers in the campus library).

But when you get to try the font out on the link provided, the stuff you type in is greyed out (not 100% black) -- and that made me really crazy. I don't know if the type being 100% black would help (or if just the spaces in the letters would make me crazy) -- but I suspect that anything smaller than the size used to type your own word(s) in on the website would make it even more difficult (not easier) to read....

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[catbert]

More on the subject here, including the option to render the article in Sans Forgetica (and in black, not grey).

[BaronWulfraed]

And they used ARIAL as the comparison baseline? A sans serif font pretty much optimized for low-resolution monitors. Ugh...

 

Even M$ started using other (just as boring) fonts for Windows design elements.

[ardene]

And they used ARIAL as the comparison baseline? A sans serif font pretty much optimized for low-resolution monitors. Ugh...

 

Even M$ started using other (just as boring) fonts for Windows design elements.

 

Well, yes. Your text and this one is in Arial as well. Sans-serif typefaces are easy for designers to use in many contexts, although these fonts are not ideal for large chunks of text. See here, Arial's usage in the Netherlands: https://www.designworkplan.com/read/arial-is-everywhere

 

But Arial seeks to pose as another ubiquitous typeface: Helvetica.

https://www.marksimonson.com/notebook/view/the-scourge-of-arial

 

Helvetica, its many variants (rounded, various weights) and clones (which also have many weights and the like) is one of the typographer's staple. It's even had its own movie: https://www.hustwit.com/helvetica/

 

To see that I'm not exaggerating, read this: https://www.fastcompany.com/1665881/how-helvetica-conquered-the-world-with-its-cool-comforting-logic

 

[sidthecat]

It’s interesting how small differences in metrics make large differences in readability. There was a BBC documentary on “The Two Faces Of London”, which were Edward Johnston’s typeface for the London Underground, and its successor Gill Sans. A very interesting story.

[PaulS]

quote .... "these fonts are not ideal for large chunks of text." ……….. the typographer's/printers reason given, apparently, for this statement is …….. "it lacks the serifs which tie letters into words and give horizontal stress to carry the eye forward" ….. not my words, but I think I understand the sense of this reasoning. Perhaps it's the blandness that unconsciously people don't like, but there's no doubting the ease with which the eye reads these sans faces, and you can see why Arial and Helvetica are a copy writers choice, though why it was considered necessary to invent another when one already existed I'm not sure - copyright possibly?? - the differences appear negligible.

 

In the U.K. William Morris and a little later Cobden-Sanderson, were keen to bring back what they saw as the lost art of medieval letter press printing, though if you've ever seen the Kelmscott Chaucer it really is difficult on the eye. Such work is really an exercise in calligraphy rather than typography, but is not out of place in late Victorian fussiness art nouveau and evolution is often slow in the coming.

But usable and pleasing sans serif fonts came much earlier than the above two faces, as sidthecat mentions - it was a great tv programme, and if you've ever seen Johnson's face for London Underground (1919), or Eric Gill's Gill Sans (1928) for Monotype, you can see how their style reflects the then current art deco fashion for minimalism and simplicity.

 

Coming back to the beginnings of this thread - have to say I knew nothing of Sans Forgetica and its psychology of what must be a form of subliminal education - is it possible to quantify in any way whether or not the system has been successful in creating a higher degree of memory retention?

[ardene]

 

 

the typographer's/printers reason given, apparently, for this statement is .. "it lacks the serifs which tie letters into words and give horizontal stress to carry the eye forward" .. not my words, but I think I understand the sense of this reasoning. Perhaps it's the blandness that unconsciously people don't like, but there's no doubting the ease with which the eye reads these sans faces, and you can see why Arial and Helvetica are a copy writers choice...

 

 

You're approaching the source of the problem when you speak of blandness. Some sans-serif typefaces create entirely different aesthetic impressions than others. Here are some pictures of the same text in different typefaces.

 

 

 

 

 

Edit: "the letters" on the first line, not "they letters".

Edited October 22, 2018 by ardene

[BaronWulfraed]

As I recall, one of the design goals for Helvetica and Times Roman was to pack lots of text into narrow newspaper columns -- leaving more room for paid adverts.

 

Personally, I have M$ Word configured to use Bookman Old Style as the default, and for text consoles (PuTTY, Windows "Command Prompt", etc.) use Lucida Console [a fixed width font in the Lucida family].

[PaulS]

thanks - just as an afterthought though it's obvious, we mustn't forget that when reading type on a bill-board or printed page, the point size will affect how our mind evaluates the text. Also most fonts are available in heavy, light, compressed, expanded forms, and the choice here will also influence whether what we see is easy on the eye, or not.

At the end of the day, those whose job it is to 'sell' to us, choose that font which is the quickest to inform our minds - art looses out to practicality, perhaps.

 

P.S. meant to ask if the point size, in all four of ardene's examples, are the same, or not?

Edited October 22, 2018 by PaulS

[ardene]

At the end of the day, those whose job it is to 'sell' to us, choose that font which is the quickest to inform our minds - art looses out to practicality, perhaps.

 

P.S. meant to ask if the point size, in all four of ardene's examples, are the same, or not?

Yes, they are MS stock fonts, apart from Gentium, rendered in the same word processor, all in 12pt and with kerning automatically rendered by the said word processor.

 

Concerning art losing out to practicality, not really. People use Helvetica and every other font (all right, maybe Arial not so much if they are professional designers) in projects which are mainly art rather than function.

[PaulS]

thanks - have to admit that I'm biased toward certain 'art movements'/styles, and the deco fashion for simple, angular linear design c. 1920 - 40 was complimentary, in my opinion, to fonts such as Johnson and Gill. Had deco not occurred at that time, who knows, maybe these two guy's efforts at sans faces might not have gained favour.

[ardene]

As I recall, one of the design goals for Helvetica and Times Roman was to pack lots of text into narrow newspaper columns -- leaving more room for paid adverts.

 

Personally, I have M$ Word configured to use Bookman Old Style as the default, and for text consoles (PuTTY, Windows "Command Prompt", etc.) use Lucida Console [a fixed width font in the Lucida family].

For Times New Roman (and every other old newspaper typeface) yes. With Helvetica I simply think that at the Swiss Haas foundry they wanted a product to compete with Berthold's Akzidenz Grotesk (German typeface) and to keep them afloat in relation to the American Gothic typefaces. Gothic is the American and Grotesk the German terms-of-trade for no-frills sans-serifs (because there are more rounded sans-serifs). There was also some stylistic idealism among German- and Swiss-trained designers who studied between '47 to about '60 to make typefaces "more rational", that is more uniform. Uniformity meant usually more square letterforms (an influence from architecture, Johnston's and Gill's letterforms, American letterforms, etc.) and having specially designed weights of a typeface for various purposes rather than to use one typeface for e.g. text and another for e.g. the bold section title.

Edited October 22, 2018 by ardene

[ardene]

thanks - have to admit that I'm biased toward certain 'art movements'/styles, and the deco fashion for simple, angular linear design c. 1920 - 40 was complimentary, in my opinion, to fonts such as Johnson and Gill. Had deco not occurred at that time, who knows, maybe these two guy's efforts at sans faces might not have gained favour.

We all have our preferences, don't we?