Phil Garvey Lectures at Kent State // Oct 24, 11:20 PM
Phil Gravey, researcher at Penn State’s Transportation Institute conducted a class today and gave a public lecture. Phil talked about the work he does as a visual perception and human factors researcher. Fascinating stuff.
Phil also talked about the research he did with Don Meeker and James Montalbano on the Clearview typeface, which is now an typeface with interim approval by the Federal Highway Administration for use on U.S. highways.
A couple of surprising pieces of data Phil collected over the years:
Futura is as legible (even slightly more legible) wayfinding typeface as Federal Highway font (I call it the Highway Gothic. Font Bureau has digitized it as Interstate). They concluded this research after the city of Miami had implemented a wayfinding system and then realized they were breaking the law by doing so unless they could prove that the typeface used was at least as good as the mandated typeface (Highway Gothic). It was. In fact, most of signage developed by Federal Highway Administration in 1950s is not really hard to beat. Arrows case study Phil showed is a another clear example.
“Positive contrast” (which in Phil’s vocabulary means light type on dark background) results in 30% longer reading distances compared to “negative contrast” (dark type on light background).
Symbols are visible twice as far as text, but are more difficult to comprehend.
Lowercase text (or I should say capital case) has 10-15% greater recognition distance but does not really improve the legibility distance compared to all caps text.
The research we’re doing in our “Wayfinding seminar” will be testing whether there is a significant difference in recognition and legibility between color, color+symbols, and text alone in a signage program. It’s exciting both for us (because we’re designing these panels) and for Phil (because he’s never conducted a research dealing with this particular topic).
Perhaps one confusing thing in our interdisciplinary dialogue was Phil’s use of the words “letter height”. I was never sure whether he meant the cap height, or x-height. I think he means the cap height.
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