Ralf Herrmann:
Wayfinding & Typography

It seems to be common knowledge among graphic designers: When you need a legible font, pick one with a large x-height! Here are Bernhard Modern (left) and Adobe Garamond (right) set at the same cap height: Adobe Garamond is certainly more legible, isn’t it? And this is even more important for signage. So here is [...]

At the University of Applied Sciences Berlin an empirical study was conducted by Sven Neumann to test the legibility of nine typefaces, including my own Wayfinding Sans typeface. The use of type in this study was based on the recommendations of the German legibility norm DIN 1450. This ensured that the study reflected a real-world [...]

In the last articles of this series we have established the relevant terms of legibility and learned what we know about the reading of words in the latin script. Now we move on to the legibility of letters itself. What makes the letter of one typeface more legible than the one from another typeface? Is [...]

In the last article of this series we have established the relevant terms around legibility. Now we move on to the process of reading itself. As you probably know, our eyes don’t move continuously along a line of text. Instead we perform so-called saccades, fast eye movements from one word or phrase to the next. [...]

“Legiblity … a word that can lead into an ocean of misunderstanding and argument” R. Hague, 1936 (via Dear Reader) With this posting I am starting a series of articles that explore the meaning and myths of legibility and readability. In this first article I am gonna start with the definition of terms and the [...]