
Took me 5 years to do this font - rustoffee
https://medium.com/design-nation/took-me-5-years-to-do-this-font-91dd7d9accc1#.1cp6thw8x
======
saycheese
Anyone understand what the author meant by:

>> "If you want to be blown away by the power of context, just apply the 3
levels of IVO [Level 1 for the 1st paragraph, Level 2 for the 2nd paragraph
and Level 3 for the 3rd paragraph], and you will see how you can read
something that just feels so strange."

Which is a reference to the text in this image: [https://cdn-
images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*7Q6MjyIt2b-P9Eyix...](https://cdn-
images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*7Q6MjyIt2b-P9Eyixnzmsg.jpeg)

~~~
iamthebest
If you follow the author's link and download the font, there are three
separate available fonts: Ivo_Lvl1-Normal.otf, Ivo_Lvl2-Normal.otf and
Ivo_Lvl3-Normal.otf.

The graphic you linked to is rendered in Ivo_Lvl3-Normal.otf.

~~~
saycheese
Thanks, though if true, what paragraphs is the author talking about?

Generally speaking, I'm trying to understand what the "power of context" means
to the author - and assuming this example explains; though it's possible it
does not.

~~~
theoh
I'm guessing he means "you wouldn't be able to read these wacky characters in
isolation, but in a body of text you can infer which Latin character each
represents".

It's not unlike the sense of "context" of Context Mixing:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Context_mixing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Context_mixing)

In the case of a human attempting to read his text, the context could be
considered to include semantic hints, knowing how many letters are in the
current word, etc.

Edit: The paragraphs he refers to may be those rendered in italics in the
preceding section of the article, but their content is not important in any
case.

~~~
saycheese
Makes sense, reminds me of these (hoax) meme on mixing letters within words:
[https://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/people/matt.davis/cmabridge/](https://www.mrc-
cbu.cam.ac.uk/people/matt.davis/cmabridge/)

Unclear how this font in question addressed any real issues though; interested
in the topic though, since I'm not aware on any science-based font system.

~~~
theoh
Typeface design is a generally an intuitive, convention-based activity without
much of a scientific theory behind it. (see
[http://www.typotheque.com/articles/the_science_of_typography](http://www.typotheque.com/articles/the_science_of_typography)
)

The designer Phil Baines used a strategy of subtracting elements from each
character to design a difficult-but-possible-to-read font in the 90s called
You Can Read Me. It was actually inspired by an experiment by Brian Coe which
was reproduced in a book from 1968 called The Visible Word by Herbert Spencer.
You get the idea--the development of typefaces is quite a slow moving activity
which owes a lot to the subjective judgements of idiosyncratic personalities,
usually male. Over the last century there has been a minority of practitioners
who strive for scientific rigor, though.

"[The Visible Word] is a major contribution to legibility studies and presents
a summary of over one hundred years’ worth of investigations by one of the
UK’s most influential typographers. Spencers extraordinarily detailed 24 page
bibliography is testimony to his investigation. The visible word is part of a
programme of research into the readability of print in information publishing.
In this book legibility is explored with equal thoroughness and objectivity.
Resulting in the fact that people read most easily the kind of lettering they
are used to. Although this may seem obvious in todays comprehensive
documentation of the topic, much was learned from his lucid demonstration."
[http://www.designers-books.com/the-visible-word-herbert-
spen...](http://www.designers-books.com/the-visible-word-herbert-
spencer-1968/)

I'm not sure where to find "today's comprehensive documentation" of legibility
and I suspect that it is a little tedious and empirical...

But as an example, here's some more up-to-date research+bibliography in this
article:

[http://gaultney.org/jvgtype/wp-
content/uploads/BalanLegEcon....](http://gaultney.org/jvgtype/wp-
content/uploads/BalanLegEcon.pdf)

~~~
saycheese
Typography to me injects bias that I largely see as artifacts of the past;
your comment that people read lettering best that they know speaks to this.

Closet I've seen to research I more interested in was a grid of pixels
randomly configured, displayed to the user for them to recall, hidden, them
compared to what the user was able to recall. Study found that patterns on the
borders of the grid were more likely to be recalled.

Thanks for sharing all the info and links, I look forward to digging into
them.

------
jstewartmobile
Butterick's "Practical Typography" gave me a new appreciation for fonts
([http://practicaltypography.com/](http://practicaltypography.com/)), and this
guy seems every bit as passionate about them.

For bringing fonts to the web, here are a few things that helped me a lot:

\- sfnt2woff/woff2sfnt for classic woff

\- Google's woff2 programs
([https://github.com/google/woff2](https://github.com/google/woff2)) for woff2

\- fontforge for tweaks and fixes
([http://designwithfontforge.com](http://designwithfontforge.com))

