Most type designers often use “blind texts” — nonsensical pseudo-texts that just show different letter combinations in context — when testing the typeface they’re working on. The often-cited rationale behind it is that this method distracts them from “reading” the contents and allows them to “look” at the forms and the spacing.
But I came to the conclusion that *solely* relying on blind texts is utterly wrong. It just propagates intellectual incest: re-using the same texts and word lists, typesetting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights for the 376th time, and so on.
Typefaces are supposed to be designed for the readers. Some claim that type design is done “with the readers in mind”. But it isn’t if the type designer is in a mindset completely different than that of the reader.
The reader does not “look” at the forms but “reads” the contents. When you try to create a crystal goblet, you should actually try to make it desappear even for you.
So I believe that when working on a typeface, the type designer should frequently set random Wikipedia articles or other real texts in the typeface they're working on, and *actually read* this.
Set your web pages, your e-mail app, your mobile phone messaging app, anything in the typeface you’re working on — and use it. Not after you’ve published, but before. Read e-books set in the draft version.
Don’t just “test spacing” in some nonsensical printouts, don’t just “look” — but actually read.
Get an e-book of Dostoyevsky’s Karamazovs or of Pablo Neruda’s poems or of Borges’s essays, set it in your type *and read the whole thing*. Because that’s exactly what the users of your typeface will be doing. Be in their mindset.
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A few years ago, it wasn’t quite so easy to do yourself unless you did expensive press tests. But now, with out-of-copyright literature available in digital form, web browser capabilities to tweak CSS on the user’s end, and e-book readers that allow custom type, it’s become easier than before. Even tools such as my http://bit.ly/MacOSXSystemFontReplacer can help.
Not sure what you mean by intellectual incest. But anyway, do you have evidence that there are type designers who are *solely* relying on blind texts? I would have guessed real texts would be at least part of the testing of every type designer's process.
I know that many designers already do it, but often it's still done with the "test" mindset. People do printouts "in order to test something", and they then consciously "look for problems in the typeface", and not "read". So their perception is different than that of the reader. I'm trying to say that a type designer might try to do the effort of actually falling for the crystal goblet promise. Take the "designer" mind out of the equation, and become the "reader".
I think this is still not happening sufficiently, partly because some people misunderstand the "myth" behind blind texts, i.e. they think "real texts" are somehow "bad" for testing. I know a few younger designers who have been mislead by what they have heard or read somewhere.
I do agree with you, however, that the final proofing process should involve *reading the whole thing*.
I am currently completing a new text typeface for a magazine client, part of an overall consultation. While working out size/leading/H&Js, as well as refining the design & fitting, I had to ask them to send me a different feature article, because the one I had been using was becoming too familiar to me and I was losing the ability to read it afresh.
I’m gonna go out on a limb here and suggest that the more serious problem is the general inability of graphic designers to read. Even just the Font menu is too much for them, which explains why so many typefaces they use begin with A through F (or maybe G, which then captures Archer and Gotham).
I sometimes translate literally German idioms into English without realizing that they may be completely unfamiliar to Dnglish speakers and are actually only known in German.
Is there a generic tefm for it in English, other than "lorem ipsum"?
I think this is a useful skill in any kind of design: the ability to switch between seeing like a designer and seeing like a user.
One of the things I like about working for publishers is that they can usually provide texts for testing (as well as press proofing opportunities).
To diverge slightly, specimen texts have a poetic and literary quality of their own, and classic examples such as the “prime beef” (in the words of Alastair Johnston) of Quousque tandem abutere… also act as a benchmark against which to assess one’s design.
So there is something to be said for using the same familiar text over and over again, precisely because one is oblivious to its meaning.
As for the UN Declaration of Human Rights, I use this as a single source to assess type in the multitude of languages I cannot read, rather than laboriously tracking down texts on a per-language basis.
Other things being equal, I haven’t thought it is necessary to locate literary texts in 50 languages. John, please share!
I also did this when doing the MATD, using the same technique as Tim; later I used a tweaked version of http://somadesign.ca/projects/fontfriend/ and my daily news reading for testing other type designs on "fresh texts."
"Blind texts" is okay for lorum style nonsense test texts, and I think "stale texts" gets more at the issue of reading sensible text repeatedly too much.
(Please note that I'm using "adhesion text" as a general term to reference ALL the random text generators. I'm not talking strictly about Miguel Sousa's great http://www.adhesiontext.com/ ).
The problem I've faced many times while using adhesion word generators, is that I find myself printing a lot of pages only to find out that there is no /q, only a few /j, a very few /x /z.
You know.. those pesky low frequency letters...
So I've made a little new tool that will generate better adhesion texts, making sure that there are lots and lots of those pesky low-frequency letters in the resulting generated text.
I also made an Analyzer tool, to be able to quickly analyze the letter frequency of the generated texts. Here is a quick overview of the differences of the results:
1st block is a typical adhesion random text. 2nd block is my improved version.
As you can see, the difference is substantial. It will save you quite a lot of ink and paper.
You can drop your font in the tool and print directly from there, making the whole process very fast.
The tools are available in the Testing Page's Tool section.
http://www.impallari.com/testing/tools.php
The tabs are called "Better Adhesion" and "Text Analizer".
(I know "Better Adhesion" is a very lame name, since is not really better adhesion but a different tool instead. Help me find a better name for this tool, suggestions welcome) .