How to Typographize with a Hammer - readability experiment

I'm just asking you to treat the post as a joke and an interesting readability experiment :D


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  • Craig EliasonCraig Eliason Posts: 1,397
    Really fun! Wish there were a better solution for diacritics. 
  • It's amazing how flexible our brain is. 
  • Nice experiment.

    It works not very well in my brain at the first 3 attempts, because I have a general problem with light on dark text. But when my brain recognises one of the characters, then it gets all in the line.

    Interesting, that's easier for me to read the last character in the line first. That's a known effect and used in machine learning, that disturbing a hardened model is necessary to allow additional learning. We have a phrase for it in common language: opening the mind. In sports the principle is known as variability training.

    After 10 times reading I adapted to it and reading speed becomes normal.

    Thanks for this extreme example. I now have new ideas to solve the recognition problem in OCR, when text runs from dark on light to light on dark e.g. in advertisements or logos. 
  • Vasil StanevVasil Stanev Posts: 759
    edited March 2022
    Many typographers have done this type of negative space design, me included:

    "Pure", c.a. 2007
  • This is very cool and surprisingly readable, especially after (as others have pointed out) the brain has a few lines to acclimate to the approach.

    I find the I (capital i) consistently hard to identify. I think it's the asymmetric/varied treatment of the serifs in a letter that I expect to be essentially symmetrical.
  • Craig EliasonCraig Eliason Posts: 1,397
    It breaks down with /I because it's the only letter without an "inside."
  • John SavardJohn Savard Posts: 1,088
    In general, I did not find it particularly hard to read, but occasionally I did have some difficulty when it was hard for me to identify the spaces. This happened between letter pairs like MI, IE, MM and so on, where it seemed like there was a full white box around the small black square instead of it being a space with the white areas above and below it being intended to be ignored.
  • [..]  some difficulty when it was hard for me to identify the spaces [...]
    [...]  I have a general problem with light on dark text. [...]
    thank You for all comments. I reworked demo for comparison


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