Chapter 4 Reflection | Nauseda

Chapter 4 is all about legibility, the ability of a reader to distinguish letter forms and words. It is generally the idea that one wants to read written words, so designing a typeface that is both unique and legible is quite the challenge. However, legible does not mean a typeface has to be bland, boring, or without artistic cleverness. Certain letters are more important than others to distinguish, such as a lowercase 'f' and a lowercase 't', as it is fairly common for these letters to be mistaken for one another.

The most interesting ideas discussed here involve the way the mind works when putting together letter forms to form words. The entire word does not necessarily have to be present for people to understand what the word is, because of the way we recognize the forms of certain words. 

Another crucial portion was the discussion of color in typography, the way certain colors can be read against other colors. In general, high contrast between type and background is required for legibility. The smaller the type size, the more contrast is required. Justification also aids in legibility; I thought it was clever how the column which discusses the difference between justified and unjustified was made to be justified, and therefore was more difficult to read than the following column. It was easy to see how the lack of guidance from the overall paragraph form and irregular word spacing made for a more difficult read.

There was also a neat do's and dont's of typographic details section, which I found to be extremely helpful. It's basically a list of subtle nuances that make type work good if it has it and bad if it doesn't, which is everything in type.