Criticism, Alternatives and Tests: A Conceptual Framework for Improving Typography

Abstract

The purpose of legibility research is not to discover universal truths, but to improve the practice of typography and design. Research should be directed to specific decisions in particular, practical situations. This article suggests a practical research style which makes use of the tacit know‐how of typographers and designers. The idea is to preface any testing activities with critical and creative activities. This leads to a three‐part cyclical model: criticism, alternatives and tests. Such a model starts with a practical problem and finishes with a decision. This model is illustrated by a critical analysis of some Open University texts.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 26 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.