Typeface Design Research Articles

EDITORIAL

It is the great honor for me to edit proceedings of “8th World Conference on Design and Arts (WCDA- 2019)”, 27 –29 June 2019, Tirana International Conference Centre, Tirana, Albania. This privileged scientific event has been contributing to the field of educational research for eight years.
 As the guest editor of this issue, I am glad to see variety of articles focusing on Art Management, Art and Corporate Identiy, Art and Media, Art and Advertising Design, Art and Globalization, Civil Society and Art, Community Arts, Experimental Typography, Fashion Design, Game Design and Cinema, Game Design and Art, Gastoronomy and Art, Industrial Design, Interactive Arts, Interactive Sound Design, Interior Design, Jewelry Design, New Media for Learning and Teaching, Packaging Design, Performing Arts, Sonic Sculptures, Sound Installations, Teacher Training, The Science of Arts, Typeface Design, Urban Culture and Art, Visual Culture and Art, etc..
 Furthermore, the conference is getting more international each year, which is an indicator that it is getting world widely known and recognized. Scholars from all over the world contribute to the conference. Special thanks are to all the reviewers, the members of the international editorial board, thepublisher, andthose involved in technicalprocesses.Wewouldlike tothank all whocontributed to every process to make this issue actualized. A total of 47 full papers or abstracts were submitted for this conference and each paper has been peer reviewed by the reviewers specialized in the related field. At the end of the review process, a total of 14 high quality research papers were selected and accepted for publication.
 
 I hope that you will enjoy reading the papers. Best Regards
 
 Guest Editors
 Prof. Dr. Ayse Cakir Ilhan, Ankara University, Turkey
 Editorial Assistant
 Zeynep Genc, Phd. Istanbul Aydin University, Istanbul, Turkey

EDITORIAL

It is the great honor for me to edit proceedings of “8th World Conference on Design and Arts (WCDA- 2019)”, 27 –29 June 2019, Tirana International Conference Centre, Tirana, Albania. This privileged scientific event has been contributing to the field of educational research for eight years.
 As the guest editor of this issue, I am glad to see variety of articles focusing on Art Management, Art and Corporate Identiy, Art and Media, Art and Advertising Design, Art and Globalization, Civil Society and Art, Community Arts, Experimental Typography, Fashion Design, Game Design and Cinema, Game Design and Art, Gastoronomy and Art, Industrial Design, Interactive Arts, Interactive Sound Design, Interior Design, Jewelry Design, New Media for Learning and Teaching, Packaging Design, Performing Arts, Sonic Sculptures, Sound Installations, Teacher Training, The Science of Arts, Typeface Design, Urban Culture and Art, Visual Culture and Art, etc..
 Furthermore, the conference is getting more international each year, which is an indicator that it is getting world widely known and recognized. Scholars from all over the world contribute to the conference. Special thanks are to all the reviewers, the members of the international editorial board, thepublisher, andthose involved in technicalprocesses.Wewouldlike tothank all whocontributed to every process to make this issue actualized. A total of 47 full papers or abstracts were submitted for this conference and each paper has been peer reviewed by the reviewers specialized in the related field. At the end of the review process, a total of 14 high quality research papers were selected and accepted for publication.
 
 I hope that you will enjoy reading the papers. Best Regards
 
 Guest Editors
 Prof. Dr. Ayse Cakir Ilhan, Ankara University, Turkey
 Editorial Assistant
 Zeynep Genc, Phd. Istanbul Aydin University, Istanbul, Turkey

A participatory design research method using Chinese character experiments: using a range of participants to test the potential readability of new characters

The author of this paper is an Mphil student studying at the Royal College of Art, School of Communication. His research topic concerns low literacy and literacy design and has two aims: firstly, to determine whether design language as a cognitively functional system can cross cultural and linguistic barriers to facilitate illiterate cognition. Secondly, to ask whether data achieved and any co-designed research findings can usefully reflect on and contribute to design literacy? The paper describes three experiments conducted at the School of Communication Research Work in Process Show, in December 2017. These experiments are intended as catalysts: to see what the challenges of the researcher’s research project on levels of literacy and design might be, to explore participant strategies across barriers of culture and literacy, to format appropriate materials and methods which could contribute to his research journey. Keywords: Participatory methodology, Chinese Typeface design

Child-Centered Design: Developing an Inclusive Letter Writing App.

Everywhere there are children, there are screens, and child–computer interaction is ubiquitous. Despite their omnipresence, research on the impact of screens on children’s learning lags behind the development of digital tools. Apple’s App Store has an abundance of “educational” apps, but many of these apps’ claims are unsubstantiated. Organizations responsible for vetting quality products for young people, such as the American Library Association, are developing resources to help identify the best digital products available, but they remain difficult to find, and there is limited guidance for app designers when it comes to designing apps for younger audiences. Our interdisciplinary, empirical study was inspired by “co-creation” (Sanders and Stappers, 2008) and “cooperative inquiry” (Druin, 2005). Starting with a seed grant from Kent State University’s College of Communication and Information, our team sought to create a high-quality and inclusive alphabet app with haptic interactions and simplified gamification to reinforce the basic letter writing skills of young children. The app rewards a child’s successful handwriting with an animation of a verb that corresponds with the letter they traced. Concrete animations and digital and verbal demonstrations connect the typographic letter to the handwritten counterpart. Librarian Claudia Haines’ rubric (Haines, 2016) and the Dig Checklist (Kidmap, 2018.) guided our definition of “quality,” and children served as co-designers in two qualitative user studies. Our young designers tested prototypes, completed task booklets, and were interviewed about their preferences and their feedback informed our design. Additionally, a focus group interview with kindergarten and preschool teachers provided further feedback about the typographic design, stroke order, and gaming rewards. To be inclusive, children in both our app design and user studies were selected from a diverse pool. Our research contributes to work on co-design and cooperative inquiry in the fields of User Experience Design, human-computer interaction, human information behavior, information science, interface design, motion design, typeface design and typography for children, and early literacy development. A post-study is planned upon completion of the app.

전자책 전용 서체 디자인 개발을 위한 사용자 조사에 관한 연구 : 모바일 환경을 중심으로

전자책 전용 서체 디자인 개발을 위한 사용자 조사에 관한 연구 : 모바일 환경을 중심으로

Message from the Guest Editors

It is the great honor for me to edit proceedings of “6th World Conference on Design and Arts (WCDA 2017), 29 June–1 July 2017, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia. This privileged scientific event has been contributing to the field of educational research for six years. As the guest editor of this issue, I am glad to see variety of articles focusing on Art Management, Art and Corporate Identiy, Art and Media, Art and Advertising Design, Art and Globalization, Civil Society and Art, Community Arts, Experimental Typography, Fashion Design, Game Design and Cinema, Game Design and Art, Gastoronomy and Art, Industrial Design, Interactive Arts, Interactive Sound Design, Interior Design, Jewelry Design, New Media for Learning and Teaching, Packaging Design, Performing Arts, Sonic Sculptures, Sound Installations, Teacher Training, The Science of Arts, Typeface Design, Urban Culture and Art, Visual Culture and Art, etc.. Furthermore, the conference is getting more international each year, which is an indicator that it is getting world widely known and recognized. Scholars from all over the world contribute to the conference. Special thanks are to all the reviewers, the members of the international editorial board, the publisher, and those involved in technical processes. We would like to thank all who contributed to every process to make this issue actualized. A total of 88 full papers or abstracts were submitted for this conference and each paper has been peer reviewed by the reviewers specialized in the related field. At the end of the review process, a total of 37 high quality research papers were selected and accepted for publication. I hope that you will enjoy reading the papers. Best Regards

Uma abordagem metodológica sobre as possibilidades e limites da comunicação em multiescrita

Este artigo aborda questões que giram em torno da estrutura teórica e metodológica necessária ao suporte de profissionais de comunicação, no âmbito da tipografia digital. O trabalho apoia-se em três temas interligados: as limitações dos sistemas de classificação de faces de tipo quanto ao suporte que oferecem à compreensão dos seus estilos, os critérios adotados por designers e empresas produtoras na escolha das escritas que compõem novas fontes tipográficas e os métodos adequados para o design tipográfico em mais de uma escrita. O propósito e a contribuição específica do artigo são, a partir da reunião e análise crítica de ideias de especialistas como, Charles Bigelow, Cris Holmes, Maxim Zhukov e Robert Bringhurst,sistematizar e estabelecer critérios que subsidiem o trabalho de designers tipográficos e demais profissionais da comunicação escrita como editores, tipógrafos, designers gráficos e de livros.

Creative Approach to Visual Learning: The Use of Filmmaking Techniques and the Rhetoric of Typography

This paper outlines the creative methods of visual learning – one that is applied in the field of art history and the other that derives from the practice of typography. The first method considers artwork analysis, particularly, the analysis of paintings. In order to present complex narratives that exist below the surface of an artwork, art history methods apply concepts that are hard for a learner to follow and understand. The use of the common means of visual learning (graphics, charts, maps) may enhance the acquisition of knowledge. However, if we try to push this means further, we may suggest a creative approach to visual learning that uses more elements. Some of them can be found in the field of motion graphic design, video compositing and editing, animation, and film. Similarly, creative visual learning concepts can be found in the practice of graphic design, that is, typography. The analysis of rhetorical figures in advertisement, for example, presents us with an inspiring notion of applying figuration to a typeface design. This concept is suggested, by researchers, to increase positive cognitive effort and memory. Therefore, effects of functional and semantic properties of typefaces should be a matter for consideration in the future tools for visual literacy.

La tipografía moderna entre la ideología y la utilidad. Una revisión de las propuestas de Jan Tschichold y Otl Aicher

Este texto busca generar una reflexión crítica en torno a los planteamientos de Jan Tschichold en La nueva tipografía (1928), un hito que marcó una fractura en el desarrollo de la tipografía, en la misma línea de las vanguardias, al contrastarlos con los conceptos sobre tipografía que desarrolla Otl Aicher, fundador de la HfG-Ulm, en su libro Tipografía (2004). Y es que, a pesar de que ambos autores aboguen por un ejercicio del diseño gráfico basado en la legibilidad y el concepto de orden, proponiendo un diseño abierto y democrático, existen puntos en donde discrepan, como es el rechazo de la tradición de la escritura romana por parte de Tschichold y su tendencia a anteponer la ideología a la utilidad, en donde Aicher responde desde su pragmatismo. Así, al visibilizar aquellas discrepancias se pretende desmitificar la denominada tipografía funcionalista impulsada por Tschichold, reconociendo sus errores y aciertos, en pos de una tipografía basada en un principio de utilidad que sepa rescatar lo mejor de lo nuevo y la tradición.

La tipografía moderna entre la ideología y la utilidad. Una revisión de las propuestas de Jan Tschichold y Otl Aicher

This paper seeks to generate a critical reflection on the ideas of Jan Tschichold in The New Typography (1928), a milestone that marked a break in the development of typography, in the same line of the avant-garde, to contrast them with the typography concepts developed by Otl Aicher, founder of the HfG-Ulm, in his book Typography (2004). Even both authors advocate an exercise of graphic design based on legibility and the concept of order proposing an open and democratic design, there are aspects where they disagree, as the rejection of the Roman writing tradition made by Tschichold and its tendency to precede the ideology to the utility, where Aicher answers from his pragmatism. In this way, after making visible those discrepancies it is intended to demystify the so-called functionalist typeface driven by Tschichold, acknowledging their mistakes and successes, in pursuit of a type-face design based on a principle of utility that aims to rescue best of the new and tradition.

Eye tracking study of attention to print advertisements: Effects of typeface figuration

The use of rhetorical figures has become a widely–accepted method for capturing attention and positively increasing cognitive effort in print advertisements. So far research studies mostly analyzed the effect of rhetorical figures in the written as well as pictorial elements of an ad. However, there have been few studies addressing the effect of rhetorical figuration in the specific area of typeface design. This study analyzes the effects of typeface figuration (i.e., regular vs. irregular stylization of the form) on attention and attitude of the viewers. The study also looks at how the effect of typeface figuration changes in relation to the type of a product (hedonistic vs. utilitarian) being advertised. Through the use of a 2 × 2 experimental design, the study measures data using a combination of eye tracking (an objective method) and attitude scaling (a subjective method). 65 volunteers participated in the study. The eye tracking results show that using rhetorical figures in typeface mainly affects attention of the viewers. We have also determined that they influence their attitude. Additionally, the study shows that a typeface and a type of products are correlated; it shows that the hedonistic type of products can benefit more from the figuration. In conclusion, our study builds on and expands the current understanding of the use of rhetorical figures by proving that there is a correlation between the use of rhetorical figures in typeface and viewers' attention, depending on the type of product being advertised.

Utilising psychophysical techniques to investigate the effects of age, typeface design, size and display polarity on glance legibility

Psychophysical research on text legibility has historically investigated factors such as size, colour and contrast, but there has been relatively little direct empirical evaluation of typographic design itself, particularly in the emerging context of glance reading. In the present study, participants performed a lexical decision task controlled by an adaptive staircase method. Two typefaces, a ‘humanist’ and ‘square grotesque’ style, were tested. Study I examined positive and negative polarities, while Study II examined two text sizes. Stimulus duration thresholds were sensitive to differences between typefaces, polarities and sizes. Typeface also interacted significantly with age, particularly for conditions with higher legibility thresholds. These results are consistent with previous research assessing the impact of the same typefaces on interface demand in a simulated driving environment. This simplified methodology of assessing legibility differences can be adapted to investigate a wide array of questions relevant to typographic and interface designs.Practitioner Summary: A method is described for rapidly investigating relative legibility of different typographical features. Results indicate that during glance-like reading induced by the psychophysical technique and under the lighting conditions considered, humanist-style type is significantly more legible than a square grotesque style, and that black-on-white text is significantly more legible than white-on-black.

The effects of Chinese typeface design, stroke weight, and contrast polarity on glance based legibility

Modern interfaces increasingly rely on screens filled with digital text to display information to users. Previous research has shown that even relatively subtle differences in the design of the on-screen typeface can influence to-device glance time in a measurable and meaningful way (Reimer et al., 2014). Here we outline a methodology for rapidly and flexibly investigating the legibility of typefaces on digital screens in glance-like contexts, and apply this method to a comparison of 5 Simplified Chinese typefaces. We find that the legibility of the typefaces, measured as the minimum presentation time needed to read character strings accurately and respond to a yes/no lexical decision task, is sensitive to differences in the typeface’s design characteristics. The most legible typeface under study (“MT YingHei”) could be read 33.1% faster than the least legible typeface in this glance-induced context. A second study examined two different weights of the MT YingHei type family (medium and bold), as well as two contrast polarity (color) conditions to investigate how these variations impact legibility thresholds. Results indicate that bold weight text is easier to read in this enforced glance-like context, and that positive polarity text (black on white) is easier to read compared to white on black text under the lighting conditions considered. These results are discussed in terms of contextual factors that may mediate glance-reading behavior, as well as how type design interacts with the practical limitations of a moderate density pixel grid.

FlexyFont: Learning Transferring Rules for Flexible Typeface Synthesis

Maintaining consistent styles across glyphs is an arduous task in typeface design. In this work we introduce FlexyFont, a flexible tool for synthesizing a complete typeface that has a consistent style with a given small set of glyphs. Motivated by a key fact that typeface designers often maintain a library of glyph parts to achieve a consistent typeface, we intend to learn part consistency between glyphs of different characters across typefaces. We take a part assembling approach by firstly decomposing the given glyphs into semantic parts and then assembling them according to learned sets of transferring rules to reconstruct the missing glyphs. To maintain style consistency, we represent the style of a font as a vector of pairwise part similarities. By learning a distribution over these feature vectors, we are able to predict the style of a novel typeface given only a few examples. We utilize a popular machine learning method as well as retrieval-based methods to quantitatively assess the performance of our feature vector, resulting in favorable results. We also present an intuitive interface that allows users to interactively create novel typefaces with ease. The synthesized fonts can be directly used in real-world design.

An Art Meets Science: Subtle Typeface Design Characteristics Affect Word Legibility in Brief Glances

An Art Meets Science: Subtle Typeface Design Characteristics Affect Word Legibility in Brief Glances

Assessing the impact of typeface design in a text-rich automotive user interface

Text-rich driver–vehicle interfaces are increasingly common in new vehicles, yet the effects of different typeface characteristics on task performance in this brief off-road based glance context remains sparsely examined. Subjects completed menu selection tasks while in a driving simulator. Menu text was set either in a ‘humanist’ or ‘square grotesque’ typeface. Among men, use of the humanist typeface resulted in a 10.6% reduction in total glance time as compared to the square grotesque typeface. Total response time and number of glances showed similar reductions. The impact of typeface was either more modest or not apparent for women. Error rates for both males and females were 3.1% lower for the humanist typeface. This research suggests that optimised typefaces may mitigate some interface demands. Future work will need to assess whether other typeface characteristics can be optimised to further reduce demand, improve legibility, increase usability and help meet new governmental distraction guidelines.Practitioner Summary: Text-rich in-vehicle interfaces are increasingly common, but the effects of typeface on task performance remain sparsely studied. We show that among male drivers, menu selection tasks are completed with 10.6% less visual glance time when text is displayed in a ‘humanist’ typeface, as compared to a ‘square grotesque’.

Food packages and communication through typeface design: The exoticism of exotypes

Although widely used by brands to communicate an exotic origin, exotypes have never been studied in the marketing literature. This research presents the exotype family of typefaces and then uses semiotic models to examine its power to evoke foreign cultures. One experiment is conducted among 1718 questionnaire respondents in order to study consumer perceptions of six exotypes. The results show that exotypes are able to communicate a specific exotic origin, especially when the connoted meaning of the typeface is congruent with the denoted meaning of the text.

The Local Genius Typography as a Source of Idea for Latin-based Typeface Design in Visual Communication Today

During its long history, slowly but sure, Indonesia had accepted the influence of the written language from various nation and civilization. Approximately in the 15th century AD, European brought their language system, Latin, to Indonesia, which had been developed until present time. The usage of Latin alphabet for daily communication in Indonesia has created a disadvantage for the local/ethnic language, especially since the Latin provided an easier writing and speaking system. Latin uses alphabet system in which one sound represents one letter: A, B, C, etc. In contrast, the ethnic language uses syllable system in which one sound could consist of more than one letter ( a, ba, ta, ka, nga, kha , etc ). The growing of the nation of Indonesia with its various ethnic groups created the need for unification language, a language with a universal system. Furthermore, the alphabet system is easier to be used for various written and spoken language in the world. The richness of ethnic alphabet from Indonesia could become infinite ideas in developing computer typefaces. A typographer could design Latin alphabet with the characteristic of ethnic alphabets by capturing the traditional elements from the letters. These findings could enrich the field of visual communication nowadays.

How does typeface familiarity affect reading performance and reader preference?

Some typographers have proposed that typeface familiarity is defined by the amount of time that a reader has been exposed to a typeface design, while other typographers have proposed that familiarity is defined by the commonalities in letter shapes. These two hypotheses were tested by measuring the reading speed and preferences of participants. Participants were tested twice with common and uncommon letter shapes, once before and once after spending 20 minutes reading a story with the font. The results indicate that the exposure period has an effect on the speed of reading, but the uncommon letter shapes did not. Readers did not like the uncommon letter shapes. This has implications for the selection of type and the design of future typefaces.

Classifying the typeface design of Chinese typefaces for body text : Sòngtǐ and hēitǐ

Classifying the typeface design of Chinese typefaces for body text : Sòngtǐ and hēitǐ