Comments on: lowercase sans-serifs for statistically-worse readability

By: John Bressoud

John Bressoud — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 00:59:36 +0000

Evan, I too have just finished reading The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. I was fascinated by the quote by Albers that sans-serif text shows neither historical nor practical competence. This seems to be a claim made without proof, hence my desire to research it further. In doing so I found your blog (in sans-serif font no less). I must say, and I am suprised at this, that I react emotionally to font. For whatever reason, Microsoft products use TImes New Roman as the default font for Word, Outlook and other products. When I see this font used it tells me the author has not taken the time to choose a more modern font. Needless to say I had to overcome this reaction to font when I started to read Tufte’s book. It reminded me of the classic Physics text books I studied as a freshman in college. But if Edward Tufte thinks use of serif font is important, I need to pay attention to it.

By: Evan

Evan — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 04:06:54 +0000

I like your summary of the situation, Detrus. The Albers quote I pulled is over 40 years old, so I wasn’t using it as a direct call to current action, per se. However, it’s interesting that his insight on the readability of screen fonts is still the norm after all this time.

By: Detrus

Detrus — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 01:28:58 +0000

There were plenty of readability studies comparing serifs, sans-serifs, on screen and off. They weren’t conclusive about the difference between serifs and sans-serifs. They do show that a combination of factors affect reading speed. On screen, the color of the fonts, text background color, monitor, background lighting, line-spacing all had a measurable effect on reading speed. Some combination of text settings worked better on certain monitors than on others. Some types of content were easier to read in sans-serifs because the average word length was shorter.

It’s very difficult to nail down the perfect text setting. Reading speed may also be a stupid thing to measure, information recall seems to make more sense. What’s the point of reading something too quickly and then forgetting it?

Recall study - http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_6894/is_2_7/ai_n28320357

It seems Josef Albers is talking about a time decades ago when sans-serifs became popular and many people assumed they were more readable. There were many attempts to scientifically study readability since then. Unfortunately it is not standard practice in the design field to understand results of experiments, so the debate continues without scientific literacy.

By: Evan

Evan — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 10:40:28 +0000

Thanks for the constructive criticism, Chris. I’d argue that the essence of sans-serif fonts and mankind’s ability to read hasn’t changed much at a fundamental level since 1963. The medium may have changed to a large degree, but we’re still reading letters on a page. Thus, his writing is still relevant.

Albers may not have been an authority on readability, but his insight is still worth noting. The overall message of his writing resonates with contemporary research and continues to be relevant in our culture of the printed word. Someone doesn’t necessarily need to be an established “authority” to deserve their views to be respected and mulled over.

By: Chris Lozos

Chris Lozos — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 03:39:58 +0000

Albers was hardly an authority on readability. Also, his comment was dated in 1963 which makes it out of date for todays fonts, audiences, and objectives.

Chris