Stat Pro Type Family

Jure Kožuh

www.Stat-Type.com

Stat Pro is a sans serif type family legible in circumstances of low visibility. Its large character set with multiple weights is defined by optimal size ratio, distinctive letter shapes, wide aperture and balanced counters. 
 
Stat Pro remains legible in unfavorable circumstances of distance, size, movement and similar. It contains over 700 glyphs, including diacritics, ligatures, small caps, old–style figures, arrows and more. This enables it to achieve wide language support. 

Its main Display style is accompanied by a Text style which retains many characteristics of its Display counterpart, while giving readability a greater importance.
 
Stat Display consists of four main (Light, Regular, Medium, Bold) and four secondary, negative weights (Light Negative, Regular Negative, Medium Negative, Bold Negative). Stat Text consists of four weights (Light, Regular, Medium, Bold). All Display and Text weights are accompanied by their corresponding obliques.  
 
Stat Pro type family has higher than average x height (72% of cap height) which is accompanied by matching ascender and descender size ratios. With its distinctive letter shape detail it minimizes the possibility of letter shape confusion, while optimizing legibility with wide aperture and balanced counters. 
 
Its main intended use is information design, where it, with its characteristics, meets the requirements of wayfinding, infographics, table setting and much, much more. It expand its possibilities of use with the Text style which is meant to be used in longer passages of text, where the visual character of the composition is retained and at the same time readability of text is given attention.

The development of the type family was based on research in legibility to achieve highly legible letter shapes, while not diminishing their visual character. 
 
A detailed description of Stat Display Pro and its complementary Stat Text Pro type family can be seen at www.Stat-Type.com where a DEMO font can be downloaded.

Nick Shinn

OK, as this announcement is not merely Show, but a great deal of Tell, I’m going to address that aspect of it.

The development of the type family was based on research in legibility to achieve highly legible letter shapes, while not diminishing their visual character.

Reading some articles on legibility, while doing no testing of one’s own design, has little to do with whether the typeface ends up being legible. The description of the design process by the words “legibility” and “research” is overstated—that’s what all we professionals do when designing a text face, isn’t it?

For instance, your lower case italic /a looks like /o in the image above.

Also, the legibility of individual letter shapes is not what makes a typeface readable, or even legible, but their relationship, which concerns proportion and spacing. IMO, this face has poor legibility, because so many of the glyphs have the same width rectangular shape, and there is little contrast between straight and rounded stems, as the rounded letters are squared. The counter of /n is similar to that of /d etc. Doesn’t that lack of contrast “diminish their visual character”, as you might say?

And considering spacing, what is the point of making a wide aperture in individual letters, and than kerning the v and w so tightly? And most obviously, the problematic w_i and t_i italic ligatures shown above—the t_i combination creates a very small aperture, and that is a common letter sequence.

IMO, making statements about legibility or readability without empirical testing during product development is bullshit. (I use the Frankfurter definition, and can highly recommend his short philosophical treatise on the subject. Basically, bullshit is glowing words that can neither be proven or disproven.) So sure, you studied your subject with due professional diligence, and described the design process, but does that actually mean that the end result does any of the things it’s designed for? I don’t put much store in speed as a measure of readability, but at least it’s something if one is going to make performance claims. How does this type compare with Arial or Comic Sans in laboratory testing?

I must admit, I am about to release a typeface with readability claims and substantial BS; I am reluctant to do so, but readability is a subject which interests me and informs my design work, and my typeface will have to compete with other “book” types that are marketed as having readability benefits.