4 ms·

No mention of acutance at all, surprising. There's a lot to be said about the way the human visual system responds to spatial frequencies, above all else. Rela

No mention of acutance at all, surprising. There's a lot to be said about the way the human visual system responds to spatial frequencies, above all else. Related: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acutance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acutance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringing_artifact http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringing_artifact The way I see it, serifs may have evolved as a way to emphasise and deemphasise the various spatial frequencies in a given letter. A sharp 90-degree line at the end of a stem may help 'cut off' and locally restrict the frequencies represented by the stem in a way that makes them more easily distinguishable by the visual cortex. Try flicking between these two images and you might get an idea of what I mean: Normal: http://i.imgur.com/NPAh3.png http://i.imgur.com/NPAh3.png High-passed: http://i.imgur.com/IoHCC.png http://i.imgur.com/IoHCC.png

slurgfest 14y ago
This is interesting speculation. But it is premature until you know that serif fonts are more legible - that's not something one should simply take for granted. From the little I've looked into this claim, it has apparently never been demonstrated despite much trying; if there is any inherent legibility difference between serif and sans-serif fonts then it is small enough to consistently get lost in sample noise. (There may be some recent meta-analysis or something I don't know about, though) Where serifs are preferred, the real reasons are cultural. Serif letters look like the ones carved into Roman monuments and the ones in all the academic journals. But there is no basic cognitive reason why we might not give that kind of prestige to runes, cuneiform, or Arabic in an alternate history. I think what has to be explained is not the legibility or discriminability of serif fonts (again since I don't think that has really been demonstrated) but rather the preference for them. It seems to me that many font connoisseurs and font-makers attach a lot of prestige to immersion in the traditional craft, and find less-traditional geometric constructions to be ugly (i.e.: as a cultural judgement, like finding Middle Eastern music dissonant). It happens that this geometric tendency is easier to find in sans-serif fonts. Maybe this is also part of why sans-serif fonts have become so important to advertising, where there has been a premium on the new and advanced for at least a century. (And this would also add another reason for preference of serif fonts: sans-serif is associated with mass production and consumption, and the default fonts on computers; thus more subject to snobbery).

slurgfest 14y ago

This is interesting speculation. But it is premature until you know that serif fonts are more legible - that's not something one should simply take for granted. From the little I've looked into this claim, it has apparently never been demonstrated despite much trying; if there is any inherent legibility difference between serif and sans-serif fonts then it is small enough to consistently get lost in sample noise. (There may be some recent meta-analysis or something I don't know about, though) Where serifs are preferred, the real reasons are cultural. Serif letters look like the ones carved into Roman monuments and the ones in all the academic journals. But there is no basic cognitive reason why we might not give that kind of prestige to runes, cuneiform, or Arabic in an alternate history. I think what has to be explained is not the legibility or discriminability of serif fonts (again since I don't think that has really been demonstrated) but rather the preference for them. It seems to me that many font connoisseurs and font-makers attach a lot of prestige to immersion in the traditional craft, and find less-traditional geometric constructions to be ugly (i.e.: as a cultural judgement, like finding Middle Eastern music dissonant). It happens that this geometric tendency is easier to find in sans-serif fonts. Maybe this is also part of why sans-serif fonts have become so important to advertising, where there has been a premium on the new and advanced for at least a century. (And this would also add another reason for preference of serif fonts: sans-serif is associated with mass production and consumption, and the default fonts on computers; thus more subject to snobbery).