Sign of the “Times”: increased font size

2. Laurence Veale on Dec 10th, 2008 - 18:32

Hi Colm,

true, size is just one element. Really good point on sans-serif versus serif with regard to scanning.

Of course, there’s also font colour - using black rather than grey (#333333 on irishtimes.com) and a host of other considerations, but I could have been accused of having a rant!

I’d be really interested to hear your thoughts on their brand.

With the NYT, I don’t think we can completely separate “their” brand and their readers’ experience. Surely, it’s the experience of the reader that really “frames” the brand.

4. Colm on Dec 10th, 2008 - 21:20

@Nope studies have found otherwise for screen reading.
http://psychology.wichita.edu/.....Adults.pdf
http://www.sigchi.org/chi95/pr.....st_bdy.htm

@Lawrence I personally think the brand, its style and its brand values should frame the experience. The experience of the reader frames their perception of the brand which is a slightly different thing. Strong brands tend to create a similar perception for “readers” (consumers of their brand in the wider sense), whereas weak brands will be perceived in a hundred ways by a hundred people. For the NYT an important consideration is also about creating a consistent brand experience across channels (print and online).

6. Elizabeth on Dec 11th, 2008 - 12:20

Great post, Lar. Serif or no serif, NYT is the easiest to read. That sense probably is driven in some part by their brand (which is itself driven by their obvious and consistent effort to create a great experience), but for the most part it’s size over serif, for me. It’s hard to weigh the balance between brand loyalty and basic legibility. I think NYT has both in its favour.

8. Daniel Martin (dacm) on Dec 18th, 2008 - 12:10

The problem is that setting a larger font will case the text to be too large on lower resolutions. It’s best to not set the font size at all and therefore let the user decide what is a sensible text size for their resolution.

However font size is not the only issue when it comes to legibility. Typesetting as a whole is really poor on the web. For instance, almost all pages have too many words per line. This makes it difficult to find the right line after you finish the last one. This can be combated to some extent by increasing line separation like the Irish Times has done.

The font face also matters. I suspect that (good) serif fonts are better than sans-serif at _reasonable_ font sizes. (Naturally at smaller font sizes the simpler sans-serif fonts are better.) But I don’t have any nice studies at hand to prove it. (One of studies already posted did show in its results that serif was better at the largest size it tested, but didn’t mention this in the text.)

It’s worth looking at the typesetting in a novel. Novels need to be easy to read. Open up a few novels and look at the font they choose, the space between lines, the alignment of the text, and the average number of words per line.

But yeah, the world would be a better place if web designers learned something about typesetting.

10. Colm Brophy on Dec 18th, 2008 - 12:32

There’s a huge difference between how people read novels and how people read on the web.

If your content will be printed out, if it’s in a PDF, or if it will be read with the readers full attention rather than scanned (very few things online are genuinely read like this), then yes, a serif is totally appropriate.

12. Tina Fountain on Jan 17th, 2009 - 23:00

I’ve experimented with using larger headline fonts and have had positive comments. After seeing this, I’m planning to increase my paragraph font as well.