With all of the recent web typography developments: new Vista fonts, CT coming into its own with the launch of Vista and Microsoft licensing its TrueType rasterizer to Ascender; David Berlow’s announcement that he has a better solution to anything that the big players have come up with, sounded like a bit of shocker! Roger Black’s interview with Berlow, titled ‘Opening Shots in the Second Type War’, steps through Berlow’s idea to create multiple master outlines for each type size to avoid having to use crude anti-aliasing technologies. This is a crude summary of his argument, read the full interview for details.

But Berlow’s concept is refreshingly simple, so naturally one has to ask, why hasn’t anyone proposed this as a solution for web typography? Having been to Bruno Maag’s talk in Dublin on Thursday night, it sounds like it might be too expensive to get a type designer to draw separate outlines for each size? But then again, according to Maag, hinting is also a laborious and tiresome process. Perhaps licensing and file size are the main issues?

I also wondered if Berlow was suggesting that as web designers and publishers we should propose the use of just three type sizes? From a graphic design perspective, this made me think of typographic exercises, designed to teach traditional principles in the early stages when one starts to study typography. There are many examples of classic typography manuals with exercises based around the restraint of using three type sizes. It would be nice from a design ‘control’ perspective if this became general good practice.

Let’s see if any of the big guns take up Berlow’s gauntlet.

Fontsmith certainly seem to have the British TV type scene sewn up. Their most recent project is the design of a new corporate typeface for that institution of British broadcasting – BBC ONE. The word ‘one’ (literally, metaphorically and symbolically) is the core concept behind the new typeface design and the new channel ident. Fontsmith’s typeface design was developed in close consultation with Red Bee Media, the company charged with re-branding BBC ONE. Both organisations have worked together on previous projects including idents/branding for Channel 4, More 4, FilmFour and ITV.

The BBC one typeface comes in two weights, regular and bold and will be visible between programming on ident stings and programme listings. Its characteristics capture many of the qualities required to create a successful typeface design for screen usage. They include: simple open forms (large counters), simple curves with a horizontal emphasis, very strong but often shallow joins, heavier hairlines and diagonals. If you compare the BBC one typeface with other typefaces designed for screen you will see many similarities in the letterforms.

Jason Smith, designer and owner of Fontsmith, acknowledges the effort made to ensure maximum legibility for screen but also emphasises some of the inherent qualities that set this typeface apart from other designs and encapsulate BBC one’s identity. He explains, the impression is of “the circular with a slightly square edge and a small kick on the downstrokes. Visually, this gives the typeface the contemporary feel that was needed but also makes the font look that bit warmer because there is some humanity in it,� he explains. The circular motif is also reminiscent of one of the most famous and inherently British typefaces, Gill sans. With regard to its other application on screen (namely web), so far it has only managed to become a mast-head for the BBC ONE hompage and idents page and the bitmaps presented here aren’t particularly crisp.

My friend Aiden (BFK Brand Design Director) just posted some interesting thoughts on his blog regarding the experience of reading on screen(s). He mentions lots of different threads and areas that I have been looking into. It highlights how vast a territory it is to explore and research. My blog is an attempt in someway to centrally locate the many disparate and relevant strands of material that I find through the course of my research and to catalogue them in some way. After looking at various different research tools/database type applications etc, it seemed that a blog/site was more emapathetic to the nature of both the research and the infinite growing, changing intellectual pool of the www. Aiden’s post has jolted me into the realisation again about the difficulties of PhD research, or at least the difficulty I have experienced so far. How do you find focus and depth in a territory so vast where there are so many possible pathways to explore? This is true of any PhD research.

The title of my research is Designing Typography for Screen – A Critical Examination and Exploration of Design Principles in Relationship to Contemporary Practice. My aim is to try and understand how we will design screen typography and to show that traditional paradigms from print are not enough to bring us forward to cope with the new design challenges of screen typography. I am undertaking this inquiry in a practical as well as theoretical manner, because design is a practical endeavour and reading and interacting with a screen is an experience. Writing critically about an experience is valuable, but the act of doing something is something different altogether.

Kevin Larson’s fontblog hosts a number of posts about various issues relating to the legibility and readability of screen typography. There is a mix of technical and design related topics.