Typography: A Technique of Making a Text ‘Legible’

Abstract

Throughout the ages the influence of the designer on the visualization of written messages has been important. No matter what technical developments and functional considerations were involved, designers always managed to exert much influence with their personal tastes regarding form. This has been clearly visable in all periods of cultural history. The designer is, however, a child of his time; he works within the spirit of that time. The spheres of influence and currents of thought form the basis which both nurtures and restricts him.

Designers have always started from the idea that consistent conceptual unity was the highest attainable goal; they have taken for granted that texts would be interpreted as they had been intended. Not until the 1920s was it accepted that a text could be more comprehensible, and hence more functional, by means of deliberate emphasis on form. As a remit of this development, the designer is often inclined to use a kind of “form overstatement” that overshadows the aims and functions of typography.

Today there is a constant search for new ideas and methods that will help us overcome the typical two-dimensional approach to typography and lead us to a more comprehensible “spatial” typography. Thinking of new, experimental, extra dimensional concepts fits logically into todays cultural pattern, but what about the public for whom the designer’s work is intended? How do scientific researchers look at such experiments? Arerít the results of research in the field of perception, readability, and legibility contrary to the designer’s ideas?

It is of the greatest importance that we, who are designers and researchers, pool our resources—that we cooperate.

Are we to expect that designers in the future will allow themselves to be more directly guided by the outcome of research into functional demands, or will rapid developments in the field of reproduction techniques force them to subject themselves to this compelling technology?