Text designers are likely to benefit from guidance on how to use typographic differentiation for emphasis. Three experiments use purposely-designed fonts to explore the size and nature of differences in the stylistic characteristics of fonts (weight, width, contrast, italic) which affect letter identification. Results indicate that words set in bold and expanded fonts, when alternated with words set in a Neutral test font, may impair performance, whereas changing to italic does not. Possible explanations are explored through measuring the physical and perceptual similarities of the test fonts.
(2012) Reading letters: designing for legibility. Amsterdam: BIS Publishers.
Beier, S
(2013) Legibility investigations: controlling typeface variables.
Praxis and Poetics: Research through Design, Conference Proceedings
(pp. 92–95). Newcastle upon Tyne and Gateshead.
Bringhurst, R
(1992) The elements of typographic style. Point Roberts, WA: Hartley & Marks Publishers.
Dyson, M.C
(2014) Applying psychological theory to typography: is how we perceive letterforms special? In D. Machin (Ed.), Visual Communication (pp. 215–242). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
Frutiger, A
(1998) Signs and symbols: their design and meaning. London: Ebury Press.
Gauthier, I., Wong, A.C.-N., Hayward, W.G., & Cheung, O.S
(2006) Font tuning associated with expertise in letter perception. Perception, 351, 541–559.
Haber, R.N., & Hershenson, M
(1980) The psychology of visual perception. New York, London: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Legge, G.E
(2007) Psychophysics of reading in normal and low vision. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Medler, D.A., & Binder, J.R
(2005) MCWord: An On-Line Orthographic Database of the English Language. [URL]
O’Brien, F., & Cousineau, D
(2014) Representing error bars in within-subject designs in typical software packages. The Quantitative Methods for Psychology, 10(1), 56–67.
Rastle, K
(2007) Visual word recognition. In M.G. Gaskell (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Psycholinguistics (pp. 71–88). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sanocki, T
(1987) Visual knowledge underlying letter perception: font-specific schematic tuning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 13(2), 267–278.
Sanocki, T
(1988) Font regularity constraints on the process of letter recognition. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 14(3), 472–480.
Sanocki, T
(1991a) Intrapattern and interpattern relations in letter recognition. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 171, 924–941.
Sanocki, T
(1991b) Looking for a structural network: effects of changing size and style on letter recognition. Perception, 20(4), 529–541.
Tinker, M.A
(1965) Bases for effective reading. Minneapolis: Lund Press.
Walker, P
(2008) Font tuning: A review and new experimental evidence. Visual Cognition, 16(8), 1022–1058.
Cited by
Cited by 8 other publications
Beier, Sofie & Chiron A.T. Oderkerk
2019. Smaller visual angles show greater benefit of letter boldness than larger visual angles. Acta Psychologica 199 ► pp. 102904 ff.
Beier, Sofie, Chiron A. T. Oderkerk, Birte Bay & Michael Larsen
2022. Fonts of wider letter shapes improve letter recognition in parafovea and periphery. Ergonomics 65:5 ► pp. 753 ff.
Thiessen, Myra, Sofie Beier & Hannah Keage
2020. A Review of the Cognitive Effects of Disfluent Typography on Functional Reading. The Design Journal 23:5 ► pp. 797 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 31 march 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.