STUDY TASK 4- Legibility, Readability, Hierarchies

Study Task 4 came on the back of our type hierarchy workshops in OUGD404, we were tasked with collecting 3 magazines, 3 newspapers and 3 typographic posters. For each set, we picked something bad, something we felt indifferent about and something we liked. I used the criteria of readability to pick these, how easy they were on the eyes and not confusing about where to look and read easily. 

At first I was planning on arranging the hierarchies in terms of point size, but I thought that doesn't really tell you a lot about the success of the works in my eyes. I thought it would be interesting to arrange them in terms of importance of information - what catches my eye the first. 

First thing we need to do is to count the different instances of font's on each example of a poster, magazine or newspaper. I found an interesting relationship between what I found the most readable and the number of different fonts on said pieces.

Number of different fonts on POSTERS (from left to right in terms of readability)

Mili Doc - 12

Homer - 11

No - 5

 

Number of different fonts on MAGAZINES (from left to right in terms of readability)

.Net - 21

Eye Magazine - 16

Grafik - 5

 

Number of different fonts on NEWSPAPERS (from left to right in terms of readability)

Metro - 21

BD - 16

Playstation Access - 5

The findings seem to suggest the less different fonts and pt. sizes you use, the easier and more pleasant to read the piece is. Although the other extreme, using for example, just one font would probably harm the readability too. It backs up when Fred once said that ideally you want to use around 4-5 fonts, max. On a layout, any more and it can get a bit dodgy.

It's also interesting to see that text doesn't necessarily have to be bigger to be more eye catching, there's some examples in my hierarchy where smaller pt sizes caught my eye before the smaller pt sizes.

I'm interested to try this out on websites too, where I deem them the bad, ok and good in terms of readability. Count the different instances of fonts and make a hierarchy of importance of information.