A Design in the Life #5

An acquaintance of mine, a font designer, says that when he sees various characters in the world, he always feels a slight sense of inconsistency. For that reason, he said in a sad tone, he has eliminated letters and characters from his room and even uses a wall clock without numbers. I thought his life was both enjoyable and challenging, and also admire his expertise at such an extreme level.

When is an easy-to-read and beautiful design not suitable?

According to a survey, the word “simultaneously” is the English word most misspelled by high school English learners in Japan. So I started wondering if easy-to-read letters and easy-to-read fonts such as learning apps are useful for learning English.

The spelling of words doesn’t make much of an impression because they are too easy to read when using a popular, long-established, beautiful font. This is even more true in the case of English, which recognizes the spelling of words, rather than the type of language that recognizes the shape of characters like Japanese.

For example, there is a phenomenon called “typoglycemia.” It is one of the characteristics of cognitive ability in which as long as the first and last letters of a word are present, even if the spelling is incorrect, the brain automatically completes it so the reader is able to continue reading and grasp the meaning without even realizing it. 

If Yuo’re Albe To Raed Tihs, You Might Have Typoglycemia.

If you’re able to read this, you might have typoglycemia.

On the other hand, if you write in a font that has a unique balance that is devised in a handwritten style, you will feel as if you have memorized the words by writing them out by hand, even if you are just following the letters with your eyes. In other words, fonts that seem “harder to read” mean that readers are aware of each letter, so don’t you think that it is easy to remember the spelling of words and difficult to make mistakes?

Fonts designed for Japanese elementary and junior high school students and textbooks are handwritten, that is, they are expressed in letters that are close to cursive. In order to avoid perfect left-right symmetry such as mirror-reversals of p and q and b and d, each letter is made closer to the shape written with a pen.

As you can see from the fact that young children mistakenly write characters that are left-to-right reversed when they are just beginning to learn letters, it is deemed difficult to distinguish characters that are only left-to-right reversed, and challenging to remember which direction they are facing. Of course, there are likely individual differences. Perhaps beautiful letters that are designed to be easy to read are difficult to read for memorizing English words and have a slight inconsistency and handwriting feel with a font that gives a different impression for each character and makes for a rougher reading experience, making it better for learning.

Some designers have an excellent sense of language and can point out the inconsistency of design element that we see in our daily lives, but there are many cases in which people feel that something is somewhat strange or incongruent, but are unable to explain why and just feel that it is not to their preference. I believe that fonts, icons, logos, and so on, seen on digital devices give a similar impression to everyone, regardless of culture, environment, or language. Of course, there are also temporary trends and designs that have been influenced by history.

Using inconsistencies in design-related decision

When designing fonts, icons, logos, and so on, we make fine adjustments for visual impression rather than geometric accuracy, which is called optical adjustment.

The image below is an example of optical adjustment. Squares, circles, and triangles that are numerically the same size do not actually look the same size, so it is customary to make some adjustments depending on the situation.

I believe that the idea of tweaking these parts with inconsistency to ‘make it feel right’ can be useful in a variety of design contexts. In addition, this idea is the same not only for design in general but also for sentences and copywriting.

So, how can we look at a certain design and judge whether it is incongruent or not?

For example, if you create a large number of patterns for too long, such as logo design or icon design, you will soon fall into a state where your cognitive ability declines, which is known as “Gestaltzerfall.” In that case, everything you see may not feel strange at all, or everything may feel strange, and you may not be able to make an accurate judgment.

I implement the following as tricks to find out what is wrong and improve it even when I have worked too much on such designs.

– For color materials, convert them to black and white (monochrome or grayscale) for viewing
– For icons, logos, and font designs, look at them upside down or turn them inside out
– Squint, step away from the screen or paper and look at it from a distance
– Shift your focus and look out of the corners of your eyes
– Print on paper and look at it instead of looking at the display screen
– Do not look at or read in order. Look at and read backward (from the bottom or right).
– Check only the color and shape of the work without thinking about the meaning
– When checking the expression of the wording, convert it to a font that is difficult to read on purpose
– Read out loud what is being drawn in order
– Take some time off, and if possible, take a nap before reviewing
– Think that what you are looking at now must have errors and look at it with the feeling of looking for mistakes
– Check numbers and proper nouns over and over again

If possible, it would be good to ask someone other than the creator to check and evaluate the work and to check if there are any mistakes or inconsistencies, but there are times when you can’t ask anyone if you are in a desperate situation. Even in such a situation, you may be able to get confirmation and advice from your objective other self by training your eye for observation while always feeling incongruent. Of course, these techniques are also useful for design reviews.

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In “A Design In The Life” series, we will provide hints on improving the resolution of the design experience from the perspectives of both designs in daily life and design in digital space. If you have a topic you would like us to cover, please let us know.