Andrew Lam

How Designers Made Words Easier to Read

Check out the Opera Browser here: https://opr.as/Opera-browser-lam Reading today feels effortless. It took 500 years of design and engineering to get here. RESOURCES / FURTHER READING Typography & Legibility ⦿ How and Why Typography Affects Ease of Reading by Mary Dyson https://legible-typography.com/ ⦿ Farewell, Etaoin Shrdlu: https://vimeo.com/127605643 On the last day of The New York Times using hot lead before they switched to computers. Technology and also sadness. I really enjoyed this video. ⦿ Great video by Struthless on the visual history of fonts; https://youtu.be/WVfRxFwVHQc ⦿ Reading Letters: Designing for Legibility by Sofie Beier https://www.researchgate.net/publication/361332642_Reading_Letters_designing_for_legibility Font Rendering & Cleartype ⦿ Invention of Cleartype: https://microsoft.design/articles/from-paper-to-pixels-the-evolution-of-cleartype-and-onscreen-reading ⦿ Overview of Cleartype: https://www.grc.com/cttech.htm ⦿ Technical Details of Hinting & Cleartype (Subpixel Rendering): http://rastertragedy.com Monitors ⦿ An amazing article on why you should upgrade your monitor written by a programmer including visuals on hinting: https://tonsky.me/blog/monitors The article I referenced in the video: https://www.makeuseof.com/resisted-4k-monitor-upgrade-too-long/ ⦿ Budget Recommendation: Dell’s S2725QC 4K monitor. It's less than $300 with 120hz (faster refresh) rates, 350 nits, USB-C input with 65W power delivery, it checks a lot of boxes. Something I’d recommend to friends who aren’t picky. https://geni.us/Dell4KMonitor #AffiliateLink ⦿ Apple Users: MacOS is designed around a certain pixel density - 220PPI “retina displays” in order to scale the UI properly. More information here: https://bjango.com/articles/macexternaldisplays2/ You can also use Betterdisplay in order to force MacOS to scale it at different resolutions (what I use) https://github.com/waydabber/BetterDisplay --- CREDITS Editor & Animations: Anthony Villena Animations: Ed Producer: Sumeet J --- CHAPTERS 00:00 Intro 00:50 How You Actually Read 01:23 What Makes Reading Harder? 02:22 Why These Letter Designs Make Reading Easier 04:58 The Computing Revolution 06:37 Why Computers Can Break Letters 08:14 Two Fixes that Made Reading Better on Computers 11:27 Why a 4K Monitor is the Best Upgrade if You Read a Lot As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases