Do typefaces make a difference?

[Steve_MB]

@gotpasswords

How about weaponized typography? Need to provide information to someone and you really don’t want them to read it? Set it ugly and give them a headache!

In the lead-up to the Lavabit shutdown:

Levison claims he had complied with legal surveillance requests in the past, and that he proposed logging and decrypting just Snowden’s communications and uploading them to a government server once per day.

But the FBI said that wasn’t enough. It wanted access to the private SSL certificates used to encrypt all traffic on Lavabit, which Levison says would have given agents up-to-the-minute access to the emails of every Lavabit user. In July it produced a federal warrant ordering Levison to turn them over…

He certainly deserves credit for his pluck. Levison complied with the letter of the order, but he delivered the encryption keys as strings of numbers printed out on paper, rather than as electronic files. What’s more, he intentionally printed them in a font designed to be hard to scan, one prosecutors described as “largely illegible.”

[Klutzbird]

I work in research and, for some reason, all statistical reports seem to be printed in Helvetica – the worst possible choice for anything with numbers. Unless you are using a very large size (or have a magnifying glass) the 6s and 8s look identical.

Helvetica isn’t an option on this forum but Arial is almost as bad.
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It’s even more fun when you reduce the size:
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[C_K_Dexter_Haven]

MODERATOR NOTE: A thread has been started, criticizing this column for style. Any such comments, please put in THAT thread: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=17443176#post17443176
Let’s keep this thread focused on fonts and their impact.
Thanks – Dex

[Space_Vegetable]

The column says Clearview is replacing older typefaces on interstates, but the very Wikipedia page Cecil links to suggests otherwise. “In April 2014, FHWA indicated it expects to rescind Interim Approval to use Clearview.”

[John_W.Kennedy]

That USDOT memo makes absolutely no sense.

[Pork_Rind]

@Acsenray

Which in the digital world is paralleled by the software that allows you to use the typeface. But what you see when you use it is the typeface not the font.

If I weren’t married, I’d propose right now.

[Acsenray]

@Pork_Rind

If I weren’t married, I’d propose right now.

My wife might have something to say about that.

[Try2B_Comprehensive]

All the good ones are taken

[Measure_for_Measure]

Those wishing to review the scholarly investigation of fonts are directed to Usability News. Rigor is limited.
Also, the New York Times reported a study that recommended hard to read fonts which allegedly forced the viewer to study the material more closely. Though for recreational reading, I would guess that they would move on to a less tortuous exercise.

[Sleel]

I’d guess that the font size is the deciding factor, not the actual font familiarity. 16 vs 12 is a significant difference in size and therefore text density.

When most people read, they don’t read one word at a time; they take in chunks of text surrounding each fixation point. Faster readers scan the contents in irregular saccades. How much information is surrounding each point can make a significant difference in processing and retention. Big-assed research design flaw, in my opinion, unless the unreported part of the research included control cohorts with the same point size, but different fonts.

And then you also have to adjust for visual size. Like DataX pointed out, it’s harder than you think to make different fonts appear to be the same size. You can’t just set everything at the same point size and call it done. It’s not that easy. (Butterick’s is a great ‘net resource for fonts/typefaces, BTW.)