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Subject:Re: Font favorites From:Karel van der Waarde <waarde -at- GLO -dot- BE> Date:Wed, 7 Apr 1999 08:54:30 -0100
Dear all,
Just to mention some research in the serif-sans serif debate:
The only decent and recent article on this topic has been published by Ole
Lund in 'Typography papers 2 - 1997'. 'Why serifs are (still) important'
page 91-104.
In this article Ole Lund carefully re-examines a study done by David
Robinson, Michael Abbamonte and Selby Evans in 1971. (visible language,
volume 5, no 4 pp 353 - 359). This 1971-study is cited over and over again,
but the basis can be - according to Ole Lund - seriously contested.
David Robinson, Michael Abbamonte and Selby Evans used a computer-program
that modelled the human visual system. The program processed characters by
'the horizontal and verical line operators' which are meant to imitate the
'feature detectors' of the human visual system.
As material Robinson, Abbamonte and Evans used a very crude monospaced
typewriter face (like courier), with highly exaggerated serifs. They only
used the characters T, E, f and h. These were fed into the computer as
dot-matrix representations.
After running this computer program, a printout was made and the characters
T, E, f and h. The characters that looked more like a T, E, f and h after
this process were the ones with serifs. (Please note: not a single
subject/person looked at the test-materials; it was a computer program).
Robinson et al conclude:'If the computer model has any validity as an
imitation of the human visual system, then one may conclude that serifs are
important in preserving the image of small letters when they are
represented in the neurological structure of the visual system'.
Ole Lund very carefully describes why this conclusion might not be correct
and wonders why this article is cited so often to provide evidence for the
statement: 'serifs are more legible than sans serifs'.
Concluding: The questions 'which is more legible: serif or sans serif'
seems an easy question to answer. There are however too many factors
involved to provide a single answer. Researchers who claim that they could
provide a single correct answer should be distrusted.
I guess that the only way to find out which one is better is to involve
potential users into the document development process. Only user tests
(discussions with a number of users in which they are required to undertake
specific tasks and comment on their experience) can provide reliable
answers for the appropriateness of either kind for specific documents.
Kind regards,
Karel van der Waarde
waarde -at- glo -dot- be
