D4P
In May, I was at a conference in Washington with the usual talks and posters. Surveying the large wall with posters during a poster session, it occurred to me that all scientists really are – or have to be – graphic designers as well. You’ve been working really hard all year on your research project and you would like to tell your colleagues about it. But the posters session is only an hour and there are fifty other posters vying for people’s attention. How do you make them come to your poster? Is it just because you use this year’s coolest laser gizmo, or because you are this year’s coolest professor? Probably but the way your poster looks is pretty important too. Just a couple of A4 sheets just doesn’t cut it anymore and you’ll get ignored.
OK, so my poster didn’t draw huge crowds. It was a poster with nothing but equations on it though, so getting any attention at all is quite an accomplishment in this case. Anyway, I did get the famous theoretician Shaul Mukamel to look at my poster and that is really all that counted. I am sure he noticed that the poster was set in Gill Sans and that the double Feynman diagrams had lovely subtle drop shadows…
A few months ago, I was reading Edwards Tufte’s book Envisioning Information. It’s a very pretty book and it says some very sensible things about how to and how not to display information. But it doesn’t seem to be very practical. It just seems that one could add something to all of that. Anyway, on these web pages is my two cents’ worth.
everything (and not too much more) you wanted to know about fonts
To sort out all the different fonts that exist and to bring in some sort of order, it is easiest to look at it from a historical perspective. Book printing using moveable type (that is, fonts) was invented in the fifteenth century. The fonts that Gutenberg designed were based on handwriting at the time and they are now referred to as blackletter (“gothic” is apparently incorrect).
Soon other fonts were developed that look more like fonts used today. Still, these early fonts are very much based on handwriting and in the fifteenth and sixteenth century that means based on handwriting with a quill. These somewhat old-fashioned fonts are collectively referred to as humanist serif. A typical example of a humanist serif font is (a modern computer version of) Garamond:
The defining characteristics are that the serifs (the horizontal thingys at the end of the letters) are angled and that the letters have variations in thickness as if they have been written with a quill (under bit of an angle). Other somewhat famous examples of humanist serifs are Baskerville and Palatino.
In the seventeenth and eighteenth century, fonts become more and more formal. The fonts are often referred to as transitional serifs although it is often quite hard to tell transitional serifs apart from humanist serifs (and who cares, really). The most famous of all transitional serifs is Times Roman:
It’s not an enormous difference: The serifs are still angled on the a and the d. The thick and the thin bits in the letters appear a lot straighter though and the whole appearance is straighter and more formal. Another famous example of a transitional is Caslon.
During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, printers became more and more skilled at making letters for letter presses and they started to experiment with really thin strokes combined with really thick strokes. Fonts became really formal and this was considered a very modern thing to do at the time. Those fonts are therefore called modern even though they now come across as very old-fashioned. A typical example of a modern font is Bodoni:
Unfortunately, things get quite complicated at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth. For example, in the nineteenth century Egypt and Egyptian culture become very fashionable leading to the development of fonts referred to as Egyptienne:
This is an example of a slab serif: The serifs are quite thick, chunky and square. Around this time the first sans serifs appear although I do not know of any examples of 19 th century sans serifs. In the early twentieth century there is a movement to make things simple, organised, logical, and geometrical. The fonts developed around that time are based on squares, triangles, and circles. For example, Futura:
Very clearly, Futura has no serifs, there is no variation in thickness within the letter forms, and the letters are all very square looking. These types of fonts are referred to as modern sans serifs. Another very famous example of a modern sans serif is Gill Sans:
Gill Sans is very geometrical like Futura but you can see that the geometry is not perfect: The letter a has variations in thickness and the italic p has a very distinctive curly bit. Therefore Gill Sans is probably more of a transitional sans serif. Other famous examples of very straight modern sans serifs are Helvetica (better known these days as Arial), Franklin, and fonts referred to as “Swiss”. Anyway, though the twentieth century, people gradually go off these very minimalist fonts and new fonts are developed that, like Gill Sans, have thin and thick bits, or perhaps have slight wonky curly bits as well. These fonts are collectively know as humanist sans serif. A well-known example of a humanist sans serif is Frutiger and the much nicer font Officina Sans:
Officina’s letterforms are a bit bendy and have variations in thickness, which makes them look more humane compared to the modern sans serif fonts.
At the end of the twentieth century, fonts design goes completely nuts: People start designing fonts specifically for computers. Then it also becomes possible to design high quality fonts at home using programs such as fontographer. The result has been a flood of really crap fonts but also loads of cool original fonts and old fonts redesigned for computers. One style is referred to as grunge fonts such as this example here, which is called Base2:
My personal feeling is that grunge fonts are a bit 90’s and that they are quickly going out of fashion now. I think there is a return to serif fonts such as Officina Serif shown above. But who knows. And anyway, I’m only a physicist.
So, to summarise. The historical order of fonts is blackletter -> humanist serif -> transitional serif -> modern serif -> modern sans serif -> transitional sans serif -> humanist sans serif -> grunge, with slab serifs not quite fitting in this list.
What font to use when and where
How do people choose a font for a particular job? The big-and-important-rule-of-thumb is: Serif fonts are easy to read in large chunks and sans serif fonts look good big in headlines. Another rule of thumb is not to mix more than two fonts. Of course, the thing with rules of thumb is: they are only just that and they are broken a lot. What fonts look like also depends on the output medium. Some fonts look great on a screen and other look great in print. Some fonts were specifically designed to look good on screen (such as web pages). Microsoft designed the sans serif Verdana and the serif Georgia specifically for the web and they do actually look quite good on screen. One can keep on talking about fonts for ages but what is most interesting is (I think) the psychology of fonts: What fonts to use in a particular case to evoke a particular feeling in the “user” such as the person who is browsing your website or looking at your brochure.
Before continuing, there is one thing to keep in mind: it is quite possible that only font-freaks see the differences between fonts and normal sensible people do not. For example, not too long ago, somebody told me that they could not see the difference between Clarendon and Times, or between Gill Sans and Arial. It might be true that only font freaks can tell fonts apart and name them but – I feel that – even normal people can sense the “mood” of fonts. Think wine labels for instance (go to your local booze shop or google “wine label”) such as this one.
The fonts are no accident at all: “Wren Oaks” in a distinguished transitional serif font, the word “chardonnay” in a posh looking script, and technical data in a sans that looks like Futura. Transitional serifs (such as Times Roman) are a bit boring, which produces an air of long-standing reliability. The Futura used for the technical data at the bottom of the label is used because Futura still looks quite modern and clean, and suggests that the people making this wine are very modern and on-the-ball themselves. These people probably use modern equipment to determine the alcohol content in a modern and precise way.
Remaining in California for a bit, consider Stanford University. Stanford uses – what appears to be – the humanist font Garamond. Garamond looks very old and distinguished, and therefore is ideally suited to American universities that want to appear more European and cultured, suggesting they have a long and distinguished history that might go back all the way to the 16 th century. Many books written by old masters are printed in a font such as Garamond, again to evoke the feeling of history and the importance that’s supposed to go along with it.
