1. Legibility & Readability
Selecting the Right Type for the Job

2. Objectives
1. Understand the difference of between legibility and readability
2. Gain an appreciation for the importance of legibility and readability to visual communication
3. Consider how a variety of factors-including style, color, size, shape, and background– can influence the legibility of a design
4. Learn how the arrangement of letterforms and negative spaces can affect the readability of a design
5. Contemplate ways a designer can increase readability by catering to the viewer’s experience and physiology

3. Legibility & Readability
Typographic clarity comes in two flavors: legibility and readability. What’s the difference? Legibility is a function of typeface design. It’s an informal measure of how easy it is to distinguish one letter from another in a particular typeface. Readability, on the other hand, is dependent upon how the typeface is used. Readability is about typography. It is a gauge of how easily words, phrases and blocks of copy can be read.

4. Style of Typeface
Display type: larger and/or decorative type used to attract attention; generally used for titles,
headings, or headlines, but illegible when used
for___
Body Type: textural passages longer than a few words, also called text type, or body text.

5. Style of a Typeface Familiarity plays a big part in whether your
audience will be able to read your text.
Typefaces that are more familiar can be read
more quickly and easily than unfamiliar ones.

6. Serif vs. Sans Serif Research has shown that for print body text,
serif typefaces-those without (sans) serifs.
1. Serifs help the reader to differentiate letters from one another.
2. The horizontal orientation of the serifs help the reader’s eyes to flow smoothly along the horizontal lines of text.

7. Type Style A type style refers to a modified version of a typeface.
Text can be set in italic, bold, ALL CAPS, or
underlined type styles.
Useful for emphasis, but should be avoided for
long passages of body type in one of these
styles.

8. Color and Value Color and value are great stylistic tools that can
help set a mood, suggest an association, and
grab the attention of your audience.
1. Color of the text.
2. Color of the background that surrounds the text.

9. Color and Value Black text on a white background is by far the
most legible combination.
Black text on lightly tinted backgrounds has proved to be highly legible
and can improve readability as well; tinted backgrounds are found
attractive.
Background tints generally not exceeds a 10-percent grayscale value.

10. Color and Value White body type on a black background
proved to be a highly illegible combination.
Of the combinations tested, reader comprehension
proved lowest for white text on a black background.
This is because white text on a black background can
produce an optical dazzle effect, making reading
difficult and tiring to the eyes of the readers.

11. Typographic Color Refers to the overall tonal value of a block of
type on a page, as perceived when the eye
combines the positive and negative shapes in
the layout.
Size and weight of a character affects typographic
color, but so do the sizes of the negative shapes - the
spacing.

12. Texture of Type When referring to a texture, we are discussing
how smooth, rough, soft, or sharp we perceive
a surface to be.
Text on a page or screen also has a texture.
If a type has a smooth texture it is a result of consistent
letterform sizes, weights, shapes, type styles, and
spacing—the passage will be easier to read than one with
a rough or choppy texture built using inconsistent
elements.

13. Size and Shape of Text
Text with unusual sizes and shapes can be very effective when used as display type, but will become difficult to read when used as body text.

14. Light vs. Heavy
Combining a heavier with a lighter weight typeface or version creates a strong visual contrast. This technique is often used for headlines and subheads, or subheads within body text, both combining a bold and a book or regular weight. NOTE: Make sure you go heavy (or light enough) if not enough it can lead to a weak visual transition.

15. The Stroke Weight The Stroke weight of the characters of a
typeface also influences legibility.
A moderate stroke weight will usually be
the most legible choice.

16. Wide vs. Narrow Using two typeface widths effectively can
create a powerful contrast, such as when going
from headline set in a narrow or expanded
typeface to body text of normal width, or when
two typeface widths are combined in a logo in
which the word is split in two.

17. Contrast
Sometimes one letterform will have strokes of varying thickness. The level of contrast between the thickest and the thinnest strokes of a character can affect legibility.

18. Height
If the x-height of a typeface is extremely tall, the letterforms may become difficult to distinguish also, because the variation between letters with and without ascenders can be diminished. Extremely short x-height tends to make a typeface appear to be small for it point size, which can diminish legibility.

19. Small and Large
When using a very small point size for body text, try increasing the leading to optimize your reader’s experience. Body type set at a very large point size can also be problematic. If the size of the letters is so big that the reader cannot read the text using normal eye sweeps, the physiology of reading will be disrupted and slowed, as is also true for typefaces with extremely wide set widths.

20. Older readers
You must consider your intended audience when selecting a point size for the body text. Older readers in particular, whose eyesight may becoming weaker, you might find that small point sizes are difficult to read.

21. Low Vision Readers
Age-related macular degeneration and other conditions leading to reduced vision or blindness can lead to an impossible task like reading the normal type size in a book.

22. Display Text: 14 point or larger
Point Size
Point size of a typeface is based on a measurement from baseline to
baseline, the actual cap height and x-height sizes might not be the
same for different typefaces of the same point size.
Display Text: 14 point or larger
Body Text: 8 to 12 points
Typeface with a tall cap height and/or x-height will probably be
easier to read in long passages than one with a small cap height
and/or x-height will be probably be easier to read in long passages
than one with a small cap height and/or x-height at the same point
size.

23. Background Contrast Between Text and Background
A text’s background can also affect legibility.
Contrast Between Text and Background
To promote legibility, you must always make sure that there is
adequate contrast (or difference) between the text and the
background.
When the contrast between the text and the background is too
low, your audience will have a difficult time distinguishing the
letterforms from the background.

24. Texture of Background
If texture of the background surrounding characters is rough or choppy, it may distract the reader’s eyes from the text, decreasing legibility. When a busy background is necessary, providing a smoother background for blocks of text can aid legibility.

25. Surfaces
When design is done for on the computer screen- keep the passages short and with plenty of negative space. The absorbency of the paper on which your design will be printed can also affect legibility. More absorbent paper will tend to have more bleeding of the ink therefore diminishing the counters of the letterforms, making them less legible.

26. Influential Factors
Good designs can help readers understand how to organize, navigate, and assign meaning to the information presented to them. Designers can make this happen by manipulating the arrangement of both positive and negative spaces within their compositions. The way a designer physically places letterforms in relation to one another can contribute to or detract from the readability of the design.

27. Arrangement of Letterforms
Alignment: how text on a page relates to its margins. Left-aligned text (flush left/ragged right): aligns flush against the left margin but is uneven on the right. Justified text: aligns to the margins on the left and on the right. (white rivers can occur). Right aligned text, or (flush right/ragged left): aligns flush against the right margin, but is uneven on the left. Centered text: aligns along the center so that left and right margins are symmetrical. Not highly readable in long passages.

28. Other types of Alignment
Runaround text alignment: wraps around graphics or textual elements in a layout. Asymmetrical text alignment: references neither the left nor the right margin. Shaped text alignment: flows along a curved or irregular line or shape. Contoured text alignment: fills a shape. Concrete text alignment: is a special kind of contoured text alignment, in which the shape of the text illustrates the content.

29. Measure, Widows, Orphans
Measure: also called line length. The length of a line of text. Printed body type = characters per line. Widows: The isolated line when a paragraph ends in a single last line at the top of a new column or page. Orphan: The isolated line when a paragraph begins with a single first line at the bottom of a column or page. Widows and Orphans are problematic because of their lack of readability. Both avoided by change of the line length.

30. Letter spacing, Tracking, Kerning
Letter space: the space between two letters in a word. Letter spacing: often used to generally describe the collective letter- spaces within a string or block of text. Tracking: happens when letter spaces are consistently increased or decreased within a string of text. Kerning: happens when the letter space between two specific characters is altered. Word Spacing: refers to the amount of space between adjacent words in a string or block of text. Leading: the space between consecutive lines of type. Solid: no extra line spacing added between lines of text.

31. Summary
Legibility and readability are incredibly important to conveying an intended message to a target audience. If letters are not legible, they cannot be easily recognized, and this slows and frustrates the reader. If a design is not readable, viewers cannot easily find and comprehend the information they seek. Designs must be user-friendly, in order to be readable; this means they must be easy to navigate and take into account the experience, the reading habits, and the physiology of the reader.