Legibility and readability of type

Today with Fred we discussed the legibly and readability of type. I learnt that simple things of type can completely change how readable it is. 

Typography is the craft of endowing the human language with a durable visual form. 

First we put our type faces of script, block, roman and gothic in order to which is most readable. In this image I don't have a block type, because I got confused to what was and wasn't a block type. 

How we made our dission on legibility

• Script is the hardest to read, unnecessary lines and serifs 
• Gothic is the easiest to read such as Helvetica 
• When letters are slightly wider you can read them easier 
• Script is mostly always joined, makes it harder to read
• Block font can sometimes be difficult as they are so close together 
• Roman used in books so is easier to read in general 
• Bigger bowls and counters make it easier  

Something being readable 

• tracking
• contrasts in glyphs
• kerming- dependant on the font
• size of the bowls and the counters 
• x-height 

Serif mostly always used as body copy

Sans-serif used on road signs in lower case 

Fed ex logo with a discreet arrow in negative space

When you stand further away uppercase is more readable, but get closer to it lowercase is. 

We spend more time reading negative space then the actual letters. 

Legibility- is the degree to which glyphs (individual characters) in text are understandable or recognisable based on appearance. 

Kerning- the space between two letters 

Leading- the distance between the baselines 

All letterforms exist within a frame/block 

If you start to kern you start to ruin the font, always avoid to kern

Tracking- when you start to space letters out, makes it more readable.

Readability- the ease wit which text can be read and understood. It is effected by the line length, primary and secondary leading.