David on Typography 1 - HCI

WHAT ABOUT THE FONT ITSELF? What useful aspects of font should we worry about. When designing for the mobile device we want a font that can be seen as clearly aspossible at small sizes, one that scales well. In general a font that is good on a mobile device has four characteristics. Low contrast and simple strokes with a consistent weight and thickness. Font contrast isthe difference in thickness of the relative parts of a letter. High contrast means a bigdifference, and this is bad because as the text shrinks the think parts can disappear. Generous x-height. The x-height is the size of lower case letters. A large x-heightmeans the non-capitalized letters are large relative to the capitals, and so as the textshrinks theses letter maintain their form and visibility. Generous width and letter spacing. Generous punch width (space within letters). These two factors are again related tohow legible font remains as it shrinks in size.