Thesis (M.S.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 2009. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (p. 76-78).

The Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) set Standard Highway Alphabet, or Highway Gothic, as the standard font for all American roadway signs in 1966. Since then, that standard has not changed, with all signs following the norm. In the 1980s, new retro-reflective sheeting introduced on American roadways caused Highway Gothic to be more difficult to read, due to the light "halo" effect caused around the letters, or halation. Recently, more studies have been conducted to improve the overall legibility of Highway Gothic. One study found that its legibility could greatly improve if it's size was increased by 20%. This, however, is extremely unlikely, since increasing the font size would also entail an increase in the physical signs lining roadways. In the 1990s, a new font was created, Clearview, to help combat the negative effects of Standard Highway Alphabet. This font received interim approval in 2004, which was removed in 2016 due to ambiguous results from studies as to whether it was more beneficial than Highway Gothic. It was reinstated two years later, in 2018. Legibility has five different components: retro-reflectivity, irradiation, luminance, contrast, and font design. Understanding these five components, and the benefits of each, can lead to the betterment of the font design on highway signs. This study consisted of two web-based tests. In the first test, the "Letters Test", participants would see a character slowly increasing in size on the screen. Once they could decipher the character, they would click the screen and input the character shown. On the second test, the "Words Test", participants would follow the same instructions, albeit with words in place of characters. There were four fonts tested, on both a positive and negative contrasts. The positive contrast consisted of a green background with a white font, and the negative contrast was a white background with a black font. The four tested fonts were E Modified Base, Alpha Two FHWA E Narrow, Alpha Two FHWA D, and Alpha Two FHWA C, named Base, Narrow, D-Altered, and C-Altered respectively. Forty-two participants participated in both tests. For the "Letters Test", the smallest average font size was the narrow font, followed by the base and D-altered. For the "Words Test", the smallest average font size was the base font, followed by the narrow, D-altered, and C-altered fonts. Overall, the base and narrow fonts took up more space than the D-altered and C-altered fonts. It is recommended that field tests are conducted with these fonts, taking into account the space that they take up, not the font size. This analysis could help to determine whether or not the altered fonts are as legible, or even more legible, than the base and narrow fonts when occupying the same space. / Master of Science / The Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) set Standard Highway Alphabet, or Highway Gothic, as the standard font for all American roadway signs in 1966. Since then, that standard has not changed, with all signs following the norm. In the 1980s, new retro-reflective sheeting introduced on American roadways caused Highway Gothic to be more difficult to read, due to the light "halo" effect caused around the letters, or halation. Recently, more studies have been conducted to improve the overall legibility of Highway Gothic. One study found that its legibility could greatly improve if it's size was increased by 20%. This, however, is extremely unlikely, since increasing the font size would also entail an increase in the physical signs lining roadways. In the 1990s, a new font was created, Clearview, to help combat the negative effects of Standard Highway Alphabet. This font received interim approval in 2004, which was removed in 2016 due to ambiguous results from studies as to whether it was more beneficial than Highway Gothic. It was reinstated two years later, in 2018. Legibility has five different components: retro-reflectivity, irradiation, luminance, contrast, and font design. Understanding these five components, and the benefits of each, can lead to the betterment of the font design on highway signs. This study consisted of two web-based tests. In the first test, the "Letters Test", participants would see a character slowly increasing in size on the screen. Once they could decipher the character, they would click the screen and input the character shown. On the second test, the "Words Test", participants would follow the same instructions, albeit with words in place of characters. There were four fonts tested, on both a positive and negative contrasts. The positive contrast consisted of a green background with a white font, and the negative contrast was a white background with a black font. The four tested fonts were E Modified Base, Alpha Two FHWA E Narrow, Alpha Two FHWA D, and Alpha Two FHWA C, named Base, Narrow, D-Altered, and C-Altered respectively. Forty-two participants participated in both tests. For the "Letters Test", the smallest average font size was the narrow font, followed by the base and D-altered. For the "Words Test", the smallest average font size was the base font, followed by the narrow, D-altered, and C-altered fonts. Overall, the base and narrow fonts took up more space than the D-altered and C-altered fonts. It is recommended that field tests are conducted with these fonts, taking into account the space that they take up, not the font size. This analysis could help to determine whether or not the altered fonts are as legible, or even more legible, than the base and narrow fonts when occupying the same space.

När du tänker på en plats du känner till, antingen mer eller mindre väl, så är det ofta så att din bild av denne färgas av förutfattade meningar eller fördomar. Kanske beror detta på något du fått berättat för dig, eller kanske beror det på hur platsen visas upp medialt. Det är dock sällan en bild som innefattar hela sanningen, eller ens en bråkdel av den. Det är det jag upplevt vad gäller Kiruna. Kiruna är en plats som för många uppfattas som kall, karg och ensam. Både baserat på dess geografiska placering vilket gör att de mörka vintrarna är långa, men också baserat på att platsens största arbetsgivare är en av världens största underjordsgruvor.  I detta projektet har jag ämnat undersöka för att sedermera visa upp Kiruna som stad med typsnittsdesign som medel. Att visa en bild av staden som rör sig bortom människors fördomar och som ger betraktaren en insikt som präglas av förståelse med en större bredd. / When you think about a city that you might know more or less ab- out, it is common that your idea of that place might be coloured by preconceptions or prejudice. Perhaps that is due to the fact that you have been told things about the place, or perhaps how it is portrayed by the media. These ideas are, though, rarely ones that includes the whole truth about a place, though. Or even a fraction of the truth. I have experienced this being the case when it comes to Kiruna. Kiruna is a city that many believe to be cold, barren and lonely. This idea is probably based on both its geographical location and the fact that the city’s biggest employer is one of the worlds largest underground mines.  In this project I have examined Kiruna through type design, in order to give people a wider and more comprehensice image of what the city is. The goal has been to show the viewer that I have created an image of a place that moves beyond prejudice and gives them insight and understanding of Kiruna in more than that one way.

The advent of digital typography has seen the printed letter permeate many aspects of our world, due to its function as the visual manifestation of verbal language. However, few scientific researchers have paid attention to these innocuous and ubiquitous characters. Furthermore, existing typeface research has generally been divided into two strands: For nearly ninety years, communicators (writing, marketing, business, and design professionals) have made attempts to investigate how typefaces of different classes and styles might indicate different personalities to the viewer, and explored the notion of typeface appropriateness. More recently, psychologists have taken advantage of word processing software to manipulate perceptual fluency by changing the fonts of different documents, finding several interesting effects. In this study, two experiments were conducted, with the aim of acknowledging and synthesizing both lines of inquiry. In Experiment 1, a restaurant menu was printed with either an easy-to-read, fluent font or a difficult-to-read, disfluent font. It was expected that reading the disfluent font would influence participants’ (n = 110) choices from the menu as well as certain judgments about the dishes. However, there was only one significant effect, whereby participants who read the disfluent font expected to enjoy their chosen dessert less than those who read the fluent font. In Experiment 2, participants (n = 94) judged a person of the opposite sex using the Big Five Inventory, a measure of human personality. The target photograph was paired with a name set in one of two fonts (familiar and unfamiliar). Female participants rated the target higher on the factor of Openness when the name was printed in the novel font. The results of the current study indicate that to some extent, document designers may safely continue selecting typefaces through intuition, and do not necessarily need the supplementation of additional empirical research.