Typophile - why is serif still used today? - Comments

Interesting ideas come out

missgiggles — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 06:07:48 -0700

Interesting ideas come out such debates but sometimes it can get very complicated for a student like me. It wasn’t a discussion in class. It was just my thoughts, nothing more. I like type a lot.

Quoting Eben: “My pet

Katharina — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 02:29:31 -0700

Quoting Eben:
“My pet logicalistic theory is that serifs provide extra data for the brain to use when recognizing either letters or word shapes as the case may be. The shape of a letter with serifs is more complex and there fore data rich. With a relative surplus of data perhaps recognition may be be accomplished slightly faster.”

Just my personal experience leads me to trust Eben. I find that I can read even blackletter better than sans.
(No, we were not trained to read blackletter at school, and yes, I love grotesque and hope to see the day when it is politically correct to buy Akzidenz.)

Given the profile

Eben Sorkin — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 23:07:49 -0700

Given the profile “Gutenburgz” has (click on the name) I think we probably shouldn’t take him too seriously.

If we had only one beautiful

Gutenburgz_1400 — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 18:41:44 -0700

If we had only one beautiful sans-serif the world would be a much prettier place.

simple answer from a simple

russellm — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 09:26:34 -0700

simple answer from a simple mind: Be there a practical or functional reason to keep or discard the serif or not, One flavour of type would be boring.

-=®=-

Long life to Miss Giggles

Alessandro Segalini — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 03:19:14 -0700

Long life to Miss Giggles and her shoes.
I hosted Mr. Patur last Friday, a humble dedicated self-taught calligrapher, a great remind for why serif is still used and important today. The students were hypnotized and that made my day.
You can also define what is classic to decide upon what’s modern.
We should also keep in mind that the contemporary trend (or duty) is to have well-thought collaborative serif/sans families.

Well exactly, there is the

Eben Sorkin — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 18:56:20 -0700

Well exactly, there is the problem of the word but more crucially there is the problem of the supposed relationship of the Sans to the modern. That doesn’t hold up either.

I will explain why if you

jupiterboy — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 18:11:10 -0700

I will explain why if you want. But first, when does this “modern” period begin? 20’s 30’s 40’s 50’s? Start there & we can go on.

So right. The word can hardly be pinned down. In my common usage it ended in 1954. What’s going on now? My guess would be it isn’t modernism or even post-modernism. And what IS up with the post thing anyway. I can’t believe we will just be stuck adding one more post to recycled theory for the rest of our post-post-post-post-post historical existence. Maybe neo-primitive will actually just be primitive again and we can use sans not because it is more modern than serif but because we reinvented it.

Pfff!! What you have there

Eben Sorkin — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 17:34:39 -0700

Pfff!! What you have there is a true-ism. It isn’t true at all, but it is commonly assumed to be true. So it seems “self evident”.

I will explain why if you want. But first, when does this “modern” period begin? 20’s 30’s 40’s 50’s? Start there & we can go on.

Or, as I said before, do a search of typophile and you will quickly find out why I say this is so.

-e.

The idea that the serif is

Gutenburgz_1400 — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 16:16:47 -0700

The idea that the serif is not of our time or that the sans is more modern is bunk. Sheer unmitigated nonsense. If you read about this subject on Typophile or do any research into western letter history you will find abundant reasons as why.

you obviously need to familiarize yourself with modernism.

One thing about a Miss

Eben Sorkin — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 23:50:47 -0700

One thing about a Miss Giggles question is that it brings out all my favorite folks to answer that question. I like that a lot.

Carl your points about logicalistic arguments are spot on.

Personally the serifs leading the eye is a theory I don’t buy. It’s a little too much like the idea that horses are pulling the sun across the sky.

Nick, I don’t agree with your idea that using the word “immersive” leading. When you read, just like when you watch a film you enter the processing of that media by degrees. In both cases you can forget anything else is going on and thus become “immersed” in the media. In film this is called suspension of disbelief. I don’t think there is anything wrong with the idea that reading in an immersed state may be different from reading prior to that state might differ perhaps subtle but meaningful ways. Nick’s magazine example is false I think because I don’t know that I would become immersed in such a short text- and if I did I would be jolted out of it by the question headers.

My pet logicalistic theory is that serifs provide extra data for the brain to use when recognizing either letters or word shapes as the case may be. The shape of a letter with serifs is more complex and there fore data rich. With a relative surplus of data perhaps recognition may be be accomplished slightly faster. If brains were really slow like a very old computer chip it would take longer - but that isn’t the case. The mere presence of a serif is not enough however - it’s a a matrix of factors that combine to make a text easy or hard to read. There are plenty of serif fonts that would be a nightmare to read long texts in. Maybe this idea is equivalent to but a more mushy way of saying serifs enhance “slot processing”.

It’s not really that

guifa — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 04:37:55 -0700

It’s not really that it’s a mistake. The students in the study were only just learning Spanish, so they weren’t anywhere near a fluency level, just trying to make sense of it (the idea was to see how students were reading and adjust education materials accordingly). They weren’t reading it backwards, just separating the two units and interpreting them internally out of order.

By reading the second half of the word first, it shows they’re still latching on to the English “I need a person before I can interpret a verb” approach, where as in Spanish it’s flexible and can be other SV or VS. When you mix in object pronouns, a sentence can end up SOV, SVO, VOS, or OVS.

It was just done on Spanish because the Unievrsity had an ample supply of L1 English students learning Spanish :) It would, of course be interesting on seeing it with Arabic. I know the students at my school (kids 3-8) do get veritably confused when they are learning both Latin and Arabic script at the same time, they can’t separate the written, but spoken they speak both Spanish and Arabic (well, I assume on the second) perfectly and are the best English students in the school.

But I would really be interested to see how our reading of texts changes based on a variety of factors, serif size, degree of contrast, size of text, spacing and kerning, etc. Take a sample of 100 people an analyze how each changes their reading of things, how they move their eyes, what they focus on, etc. Much like the highway font experiment but instead of for long-distance reading, for short distance and both for long and short term reading (eg, display words/titles v body text).

Perhaps in doing so we might find that the eye seems to track along a the base line in a serif font, giving weight to the idea that serifs guide the reader and make it easier, or we might find that they distract to an extent. Or we might find they really don’t make much of a difference. Anyone wanna set up an experiment? :)

«El futuro es una línea tan fina que apenas nos damos cuenta de pintarla nosotros mismos». (La Luz Oscura, por Javier Guerrero)

Like all other languages

Thomas Phinney — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 17:52:08 -0700

Like all other languages written with the Latin writing system (including English), Spanish is written and read left to right.

It’s interesting that the non-native readers made this mistake, given that their native language is read in the same direction and has the same property of having verb conjugations that change the ending of the word (-ed, -ing, -s).

It would be much less surprising/interesting to learn that people made equivalently basic errors if there was a larger difference between their native language and the new language - as would be the case with Spanish vs Arabic or English vs Arabic.

Cheers,

I’ll admit it - I

Jackie T — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 17:31:50 -0700

I’ll admit it - I haven’t read the whole thread. But has anyone ask the question yet —

Miss Giggles - which class is this question for?

Your teachers always come up with some interesting questions for their students to ponder....

Wow - old thread... just saw that — so the question would have been

Miss Giggles - which class was this for?

And better yet - what came out of the class discussion....?

“so much research over so

enne_son — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 17:21:15 -0700

“so much research over so many years has established that the funkiness, contrast, and sheer visual interest of serifs are why they are preferred for reading [my emphasis]”

Your sources?

why is serif still used today?

missgiggles — Fri, 1 Dec 2006 03:43:19 -0800

what purpose does it convey? is there specific reasons as to why they still around after so many centuries? what kept them alive? who kept them alive and for what purpose?