I'll be picking three points out of each to discuss so that this doesn't turn into a five page paper.
--------------------
Comapre & Contrast: Georgia, Courier New & Times New Roman.
The first thing noticeable between Georgia, Courier New and Times New Roman are their x-heights. Georgia has the largest x-height, while Courier New and Times New Roman seem to have similar x-heights. If there's a difference it's very minuscule in comparison to Georgia. The larger x-height gives Georgia an easier read in contrast to the other two and allows for it to continue legibility as it's shrunk. This isn't as true for the other two, especially Times New Roman.
The second most noticeable thing between these three fonts are their bowls. Each of the three font's bowls vary in width, with Courier New's bowls being the most legible as it's shrunk down. Georgia's bowls are the second most legible of the grouping. You wouldn't think that as they seem skinniest as you compare them at 1.6ems, but Georgia's larger x-height allows those letter forms to be shrunk with little change in legibility. Times New Roman comes out the worst with both its bowls and x-height being small, it causes the lettering to condense and turn into tiny clusters as its re-sized.
The third most noticeable thing between these font types are their leading and tracking. The default leading for Courier New is much greater than that of Georgia and Times New Roman. While this does help to keep the word spacing legible as it's shrunk, it is also not visually pleasing and at times causes the eye to skip as you're reading because the flow is too broken. On the other hand, Times New Roman's default leading and tracking is much too tight. As it's shrunk, it causes the letter forms and words to bunch together making it increasingly difficult to look at them as singular objects. Instead the tight leading and tracking makes it easier to group words together as you're reading and or skip over them as you try and find your place. Georgia again comes out on top with a mixture of leading, tracking and x-height that keeps its font legible without being visually unappealing. If it were to be missing the factor of its x-height, I think Georgia would be in the same boat as Times New Roman in terms of legibility.
Compare & Contrast: Impact, Arial & Verdana
The first thing noticeable in this new set of fonts is the stroke-weight of the fonts. Impact has the thickest stroke weight of the three while Arial and Verdana are smaller, but equal in their stroke-weight. Even now, it's very hard to read Impact as its stroke-weight in addition to other factors make the letters look like illegible blobs. Arial and Verdana's thinner stroke weight allows those two fonts to continue to be legible, even when shrunken down, although to a lesser degree. Impact's legibility is almost non-existent when it's shrunken down to a smaller size.
Another noticeable thing between these three fonts are the lengths of their ascenders, descenders and arms. Arial and Verdana have longer ascenders and descenders than Impact, and the ascenders and descenders Impact has are made difficult to read by the stroke-weight of its lettering. Had Impact had longer ascenders and descenders, the lettering within the font may have been more legible with its stroke-weight. That being said, Arial and Verdana are similar in the size of their ascenders and descenders, but Verdana has longer arms to its T's creating more space between the letter forms. These longer ascenders and descenders also help to keep Arial and Verdana legible when it is shrunken in size as well.
The last most noticeable thing between this font group is the size of their bowls, counters and eyes. Verdana has larger bowls and eyes in comparison to Arial and Impact, although Arial trails right behind Verdana. In combination with their x-heights, stroke-weights, ascenders, descenders and arms, this allows those two particular fonts to be scaled down without losing their forms and becoming hard on the eyes of the reader. You can clearly tell the shape of the lettering and can read fluidly what they say. Impact doesn't follow Arial and Verdana's example, and has much smaller bowls, counters and eyes. Even without the stroke-weight what it is, the font would still be hard to read as it would be quite compact off the bat, just like Times New Roman was in the first set of comparison.
Compare & Contrast: Verdana, Ambrosia Demo & Batang
The quickest thing noticeable in this new set of fonts is their x-heights. Ambrosia Demo has the smallest x-height of the three fonts, Verdana having the biggest and Batang being closer in x-height to Verdana than it is to Ambrosia Demo. Although they have the same size and leading as one another, Ambrosia Demo is already difficult to read as a font with its x-height being so small and its tracking so close together. Its quite difficult to read for a sans serif, unlike Verdana. Batang, on the other hand, is a lot easier to read for a serif on the internet. It's x-height, along with other factors, allow it to remain relatively legible even when being reduced in side.
The second most noticeable thing about this particular font group is its tracking. Ambrosia Demo falls short again in regards to tracking, with its default tracking being quite a bit tighter than Verdana or Batang. Batang is a slight bit tighter than Verdana, but it doesn't make a particularly large impact when it comes to the reduction of size with the fonts. Verdana and Batang are still quite legible at 1.2ems, while Ambrosia Demo is nearly non-existent in terms of legibility. You can barely make out the fact there's letters and words when it comes to Ambrosia Demo. It's tracking along with it's x-height makes it look like simple lines put into small box shaped rows. This problem is not apparent with Verdana or Batang.
The last noticeable thing between these fonts are their bowls, counters and eyes, just like with the last group of fonts. Ambrosia Demo's bowls, counters and eyes are quite small and in some of the lettering already looks quite non-existent. Verdana is the easiest to read with larger bowls and eyes, although some of its countering is small. Batang has slightly smaller counters than Verdana does, but their countering in their o's and q's are almost the same as Verdana's. However, Batang's a's have bowls quite a bit smaller than Verdana's does. Taking out Ambrosia Demo entirely, Batang is a little harder to read than Verdana is, but mostly because of the use of the bowls in its a's and the loops of its g's.
--------------------
I hope that was enough for the assignment. It wasn't given a defined criteria for length, and I didn't want to make it pages long. That'd be a lot to read.
No comments:
Post a Comment