Optical compensations and writing tools
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Jasper de Waard: I am interested in the cause of this bias. Why would our visual system be set up in such a way that the A’s left line appears thicker than its right line (if they are metrically equal)?
This Why-question is asking for a kind of “nature nurture discussion”, which is out of the scope of this forum. It’s like asking “Why does the sun exist”, when discussing solar power technology. What- or How-questions—like “What kind of bias is it exactly?” or “How can we compensate (if we would want that) for this bias when designing a specific glyph?”—are within the scope of this forum.
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When you have letters like M and W, which have so many strokes and joins to complete in a small space, the difficulty for me is just to overcome the business and darkness compared to the other letters. Following a pure stroke model becomes difficult with heavy weights. I feel it is necessary to tinker with these letters more than any other. For me, drawing an S is a piece of cake compared to a W. The attempt at true monoline heavy W is the most strife filled. Contrasty versions are much easier.1
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IIRC, calligraphers also turns the pen a bit for optical compensation. I guess it was in one of Sheila Waters books (or something similar) that they, for example, turn the pen a little more when doing the uppercase /N diagonal and in other situations.
G. Bickham not only turned the pen but also used only a portion of the writing surface when doing some exit strokes. Will try to find the exact reference later.
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