Well, while we've been talking about Helvetica Now....

Rob Barba
Rob Barba Posts: 86
edited April 2019 in Font Technology
...the Royal Melbourne Institute for Technology (Australia's MIT or Caltech, for those not in the know) has released Sans Forgetica, a font "scientifically designed to help you remember your study notes".



At first, it looks like your typical leftalic display font, but they go into a lot of interesting points.  I personally intend to download this just to play with it, and I suspect that its ultimate use won't be for study notes, but as a display font.

Thoughts?

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Comments

  • Henning von Vogelsang
    Henning von Vogelsang Posts: 147
    edited April 2019
    I couldn’t find the thread anymore, but I think this has been discussed before in this forum.
    I don’t have a PhD in psychology and my knowledge of behavioural psychology and cognitive science is limited. Still, I learned that we read whole lines, we capture words as a whole, not only individual letters. And making cognition harder on the letter level while sabotaging the cognition of combined words as a combination that transmits information seems a rather unproductive way of supporting understanding and learning.
  • Rob Barba
    Rob Barba Posts: 86
    edited April 2019
    Henning von Vogelsang said:
    And making cognition harder on the letter level while sabotaging the cognition of combined words as a combination that transmits information seems a rather unproductive way of supporting understanding and learning.
    Yup, that's very true.  Am also following a similar discussion on reddit and someone noted that in passing, also pointing out that it's self-defeating as well:
    I don't get it. It's harder to read so you spend more time reading it so you remember it better? What happens when you inevitably get proficient in reading it and manage to read this font at the same speed as a normal font?


  • Henning von Vogelsang
    Henning von Vogelsang Posts: 147
    The question in the last part of the Reddit comment is a followup question to the question of how we know cognitive behaviour works. We are quick in adapting and learning to bridge the gap of missing information. That’s one of the principles behind Gestalt psychology. So it is inevitable that after reading a few chapters written in this less legible font, readers will likely adapt and their brains use the learned patterns instead of having to decypher individual letter shapes.
  • Theunis de Jong
    Theunis de Jong Posts: 112
    That was the totally forgettable thread Sans Forgettica - can 'Desirable Difficulty' really aid memory?. So, this field test shows it didn't work: four months later nobody remembers it.
  • André G. Isaak
    André G. Isaak Posts: 634
    I'd not only forgotten about that thread; I've already completely forgotten about this one.
  • Rob Barba
    Rob Barba Posts: 86
    Okay, obviously the system had forgotten it as well as I did a search before I posted this topic and it didn't come up.
  • Vasil Stanev
    Vasil Stanev Posts: 775
    edited April 2019
    There are things more obsolete than this font. For example the higher education scam, I mean system. I hurts my brain to think of the other people's time and money wasted on this fontoid.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYrhzIi3SJY&t=631s
    ----------
    Considering memory improvement, there are tons of resources online, from world memory champion Dominic O'Brien to all kinds of YouTube educational channels. You know, the ones making the scam obsolete.
  • Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian
    Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian Posts: 2,044
    Related:

  • John Savard
    John Savard Posts: 1,135
    I now see that in U&lc volume 12, issue 1, p. 60, Allied Linotype had a new numbered series of Helvetica; their advertisement detailed the modifications made to adapt it to photocomposition as well as "CRT and laser" technologies. Also, a larger selection of weights was provided. This is the May, 1985 issue. Ah, this is two years after Helvetica Neue.

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