Computer Fonts are for Computers
This story is about the Usability of the letters we read, and why it matters where we read them.
In the early 1990’s, at the advent of personal computers, Microsoft commissioned a renown type designer, Matthew Carter, to develop several typefaces for the Windows operating system. At the time, computer monitors were big and clumsy tubes full of pixels so big they were easily visible to the naked eye, so creating a legible font was quite the chore. These were old-fashioned television sets, actually, meant to be viewed from across a room, but suddenly thrust straight in front of us, and not easy to look at up close.
However, for the most part, this clunkiness did not matter because the monitor was just a means to preview the text, the real result would be printed to a printer. The printed page was the end result of early computers because in those days, the laser-writing technology of our printing devices far surpassed the primitive nature of those cathode-ray tube (CRT) monitors.
But computer makers had hopes and visions for a future when the computer screen would be sharp and portable and most-especially the ends and not the means. It’s nice, they supposed, to be able to sell cartridges of ink and reams of paper so scores of people could read a printout, but imagine if those scores of people were at their own computer instead, each reading the piece on a computer screen and not a printed sheet! The market was vast and virtually untapped and screens were the way in.
Mr. Carter was reluctant at first because he had developed fonts before, and as a founder of Bitstream Inc. — a distributor of electronic fonts for photo-mechanical typesetting machines — he was well-aware of the speed with which technology was changing the landscape. His fear was that his work would be for naught because it would become obsolete just as soon as it was complete. Microsoft, however, assured him that the technology to supplant the CRT was still at least a decade away, and that suddenly made the effort worthwhile for Mr. Carter.
(BTW, Microsoft was mostly correct because it took until the early 2000’s for an affordable LCD screen to surpass the resolution of the ubiquitous CRT)
The result of Microsoft’s commission of Mr. Carter was the Georgia font, and also Verdana (a sans-serif) and its close cousin, Tahoma, which was specifically designed to be a bit narrower so it would fit in computer menus and such. All the while, Apple Computer was working on its own suite of computer fonts, and these eventually became the ubiquitous stable of fonts we are accustomed to seeing and using on the personal computers that have revolutionized our society.
What must be noted, however, is that these fonts were mostly intended for the computer screen, and specifically for the person sitting at the computer screen, and even more specifically, for the person sitting very close to that computer screen. In fact, these fonts required an additional effort called “hinting,” which is essentially the mathematically-assisted nudging of characters to make absolutely sure they maintain upmost legibility without running into one another. Hinting was not a thing for thousands of years of type design, but it is a thing now.
To hint is not to kern.
But, when we are driving down the freeway and looking for an exit, we rely on text that is most definitely not Georgia. When we are hurrying to find the gate at an airport, we depend on signage that is not Verdana. At the hospital, the directions to find our loved ones are not typeset in Tahoma. This is because when we are not at a computer, there are a lot of other dynamics involved in the legibility of what we are reading, and virtually none of that involves hinting. Screaming is more like it.
Now, of course, a PowerPoint presentation is technically on a computer, but the audience who will be viewing the presentation is not. In fact, the audience of a PowerPoint presentation may be a good distance away from the screen in view, and that screen in view may even be 20 feet tall. In instances like this, hinting does not matter, but other intricacies like kerning, leading, and tracking do. What matters a mere inches from our nose is not what matters from a hundred feet away.
In the world of type design, there is a particular discipline known as “wayfinding” which is the design of fonts for signage meant to be viewed from some distance, and usually of some importance, where legibility is key. With highway signage, especially, there are concerns that text withstand the ravages of late-afternoon sunlight and the virtually impenetrable murkiness of a soupy fog or torrential downpour. These may not apply to a conference room presentation, for sure, until we consider how the light of day affects anywhere on earth, as does the quality and age of projectors, the supposed default settings of a big screen monitor, and the withering squint of a CEO.
Sadly, the defaults of a computer application might suggest fonts designed for a computer rather than those designed for people, and a Google search for which fonts are safest will most likely result in suggestions for “safe fonts,” which is a criteria that seems to have more to do with what fonts are most-certain to be available on the computer assigned to drive the projector, rather than what will actually look best on the screen. People should matter more than projectors, but in situations like the panicky set-up for a crucial presentation, sadly, they do not. We are beholden to the device.
Suffice it to know that there is more to know about fonts. A lot more.
In a nutshell, it might be helpful to realize that fonts with embellishments at the tips of the letters (like in what you are reading now) are called serif fonts, and these serifs are designed to bleed the letters into one another, sometimes even overlapping them into glyphs. This nesting conspires to create entire word-forms that are quickly recognized as we read vast amounts of text, and this helps to speed us along through paragraphs with considerable ease.
However, when the words are fewer, those words are less-rapidly consumed as sentences and so can each demand more attention. In these instances—such as for signs, headlines, and a PowerPoint bullet-point—a sans-serif is usually most appropriate. This is why sans-serif is what we see in practically all signage on highways, in hospitals, airports, and subway stations.
It is also worthwhile to know that the best fonts developed for signage are not likely to be free, and can indeed be quite expensive (100s or 1,000s of $!). This is because their intended use demands a significant amount of craft and the intended customers (who buy them to make the signs) are fewer and farther between. But there are good and adequate alternatives which can work in a pinch, if you know where to look.
For a PowerPoint presentation, a good rule of thumb is to pick fonts with a good “condensed” style which will allow the letters to be larger without sacrificing too much horizontal space. Heft matters too, so a font with a “bold-condensed” style can be an exceptional candidate for a larger room. But don’t go “compressed” because that borders on the hard-to-read. Most importantly, steer clear of the crazy. You want the audience to read what you are saying without having to think about how you are saying it. You want a font so easy to read that it practically disappears into your words. That’s what fonts are for.
This is one in a series of articles meant to relate Design and Usability concerns to anyone who may not be experienced with such things but needs to use them anyway. These articles have a particular emphasis on how to make data visualizations and PowerPoint presentations more usable for an audience — because the audience is the most important reason we make these things.
