Serif vs. sans serif? (Take II)

["Hart, Geoff" <Geoff-H -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA>]

Bruce Byfield responded to my statement that "typeface choice is a highly
subjective thing": <<if by "subjective" you mean "a matter of personal
preference," I have to say that the matter is a little more complicated.>>

Really? Who knew? <g> Or course it's complicated! When you discuss
typography, there are very few truly objective standards, among other things
because you're trying to integrate the integration of dozens of factors
simultaneously. (For example, change font size and you have to play with
leading, kerning, etc.)

<<For one thing, fonts have a connotative history that affects how are they
are perceived. Black letter fonts are reminiscent of the Nazis.>>

Since when? They certainly don't have that connotation with me. Admittedly,
only one of my relatives (a great uncle) lost his whole family to the Nazis,
so perhaps I wasn't traumatized enough to learn this association.

<<Sans serif or geometric fonts still have an avant-garde feel.>>

I noted this in my original message, though I used the word "modern" rather
than avant garde because sans serif was avant garde 40 years ago because of
their European feel, not now. Now they're way "apres garde"; "grunge" fonts
are avant garde, or (if we're lucky) have faded back into well-deserved
obscurity.

<<Because of Apple, Garamond is a popular choice for technical manuals.>>

No, it was a popular font because of its esthetics and legibility first;
Apple chose it for that reason. It's used commonly in technical manuals
simply because Garamond is part of the core font pack that ships with ATM
and many laser printers.

<<An informed choice of fonts requires an awareness of such histories.>>

Not at all. Maybe _you_ would notice the historical connotation of a font,
but most readers (and most designers I've talked to) wouldn't. Heck, I've
done a pile of reading on typography and I wouldn't know anything about the
history of most fonts; that's because I'm more interested in how to use them
than in where they came from. Since we techwhirlers aren't designing for a
font historian like you, but rather for readers, I prefer to leave such
subjective factors as connotation out of my considerations of type choice.

<<For example, I personally like Optima, but I'd think twice of using it in
documentation because in the past it's been a favorite of perfume ads, and
at least some readers would find it subtly odd or even off-putting.>>

Okay, hands up everyone who knew this and abandoned Optima for this
reason... Anybody?

<<experienced typographers can point to very definite structural elements
that make a font preferable for one use or the
other.>>

As can experienced designers with a knowledge of legibility. The problem
with many typographers--based on the font reviews that I've read over the
years in Publish, and in the various publications of Adobe and other
foundries--is that they're influenced primarily by esthetic considerations,
and only secondarily by legibility. Certainly not by any objective
(scientific, reader-based) assessment of legibility.

<<if looking for a font that was readable in 8 points, a typographer might
look for (among other things) a large x-height, and well-rounded bowls (the
curves in letters like "b" and "d").>>

True enough, and that's important to note: a font that works great for body
text at 10-point can look horrible as a 72-point headline font, and vice
versa. Let's not get into the whole issue of optical sizing; that's a long
discussion unto itself.

<<Similarly, for on-line legibility, a typographer would look for very
regular strokes in the letters.>>

Not necessarily. Modern sans serif fonts with tapered stroke widths are much
more legible than constant-stroke fonts such as Arial, and particularly so
if they're designed for online viewing or assisted by technologies such as
ATM or Microsoft's ClearType that are designed to enhance legibility. The
real problem arises when the monitor resolution won't properly display the
strokes (because they're smaller than the dots used to create them at a
particular size), and whether that's the case also depends on the size of
the font. As you note, simplistic statements don't accomodate the complexity
of this issue.

<<a point might come after discussing the construction of different fonts
when which one to use would be a matter of personal preference. However,
before that point was reached, many other fonts could be discarded for
objective reasons as unsuitable for the context.>>

So how do you choose--objectively--between two fonts that are both "good
enough"? You do it subjectively. There's no one perfect font for every
combination of conditions. Once you've narrowed down your choice based on
objective criteria, there are always several alternatives, and the choice
between them comes down to purely subjective factors.

--Geoff Hart, FERIC, Pointe-Claire, Quebec
geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca 
"User's advocate" online monthly at
www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/usersadvocate.html

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