Buffy ,'Dirty Girls'
[NAFDA] "There will be an occasional happy, so that it might be crushed under the boot of the writer." From Zorro to Angel (including Wonderfalls, The Inside and Drive), this is where Buffistas come to anoint themselves in the bloodbath. Oh, and help us get Terriers dvds!
I don't like arial.
Loathe it. And I strongly suspect that this study was designed as Arial-vs-something-flowery for the sake of controlling variables, but if it gets picked up in the wrong blogs, there'll be stupid advice all over the place saying "Science says you should always use Arial". And then I'll have to bang my head against my desk a lot.
(Banging one's head against the clients is viewed as assault, for some reason.)
Did anyone post about the article in Slate on DIY fonts? [link]
I want to see the actual study (which is annoyingly not linked in the article, requiring me to actually use the Google). Partly because its sounds interesting, and partly because... Arial?
There's a preprint at the author's website, scroll down to "If it's hard to read . . . "
There's a preprint at the author's website
Awesome! Because the news release was less informative than usual, and I was being more than usually lazy.
I had a similar problem with the same journal last spring. They publicized the paper (the so-called "Clueless men" paper) but didn't have it up on their website, so we had to send it to dozens of journalists one by one.
Okay, that sounds awesome!
And Amych - comparison was Ariel vs. Brush. As you suspected.
I'm dull but safe font guy. For print Times New Roman or Garamond. For screen Verdana. Obviously there are other choices and reasons for making them. I suppose I ought to get hold of an introduction to layout. Since I have NO good instincts in that area one that starts from the beginning and won't get me into any bad habits.
TB: get The Non-Designer's Design Book [link] -- it's a solid introduction to the basic design principles (things like getting things lined up and in proportion, keeping an eye on contrast, drawing attention to the right things), without requiring any particular artistic background or skill level. It's really good for what you're aiming at (and what I wish more people would shoot for!), which is to keep things clean and readable and not get in people's way.
I flipped through the first twenty or so pages of the book on amazon, and it certainly seems levelheaded.