International Journal of Affective Engineering Vol.16 No.2 pp.121-130 (2017) doi: 10.5057/ijae.IJAE-D-16-00028 Special Issue on ISASE 2016 ORIGINAL ARTICLE Images and Anatomy of Latin Typefaces Qianru QIU, Shu WATANABE and Kengo OMURA Fuji Xerox Co. Ltd., 6-1 Minatomirai, Nishi-ku, Yokohama-shi, Kanagawa 220-8668, Japan Abstract: Typeface is ubiquitous in everyone’s daily life, and it plays an important role in document design especially. However, we still possess a less knowledge about the affective expressions of various typefaces, and it is difficult for even the designers to tell which characters would make difference in feelings. This study quantifies the relationships between images and anatomy of typefaces by the process of kansei/affective engineering. A kansei evaluation experiment for Latin typefaces was conducted for 88 designers and the evaluation data was analyzed by factor analysis, cluster analysis, and quantification theory Type I. The results are helpful for typeface selection and make it closer to readers’ preferences. Moreover, the affective relationships between images and design characteristics of typefaces were developed as practical guidelines for typeface design. Keywords: Affective design, Typeface design, Typeface anatomy There are a few studies on various glyph characters 1. INTRODUCTION of Latin typefaces and human emotions. In research [9], 24 fonts were selected with a range from serif and sans-serif Typeface is fundamental to graphic design. Nowadays, to display types without covering all basic styles of fonts, there are thousands of different typefaces available in a and several structural features, as x-height, were analyzed digital format for designers, printers, publishers, artists, as typeface characteristics. In research [2], 16 universal and even office workers. The recent technical develop- and 8 typeface-specific characteristics were provided. The ments with computer have been bringing new faces or universal ones were subjective descriptions of types which variations of old ones. It is proved that typefaces have made people confused with human tastes. The typeface- significant impacts on human emotions in our initial specific ones were general graphic descriptions without research of document design [1]. In marketing research, detail components. it is an important visual tool for impression management This work is focused on the Latin Typefaces. In this of corporate identity, such as trademarks, symbols and paper, we elaborately picked up 36 typefaces of all logotypes of corporations [2, 3]. However, the vast amount classifications based on historical development. A kansei of types sometimes confuses people to use good or poor evaluation experiment was executed and the evaluation data typefaces in their design works. Therefore, the affective were analyzed by R language. The affective knowledge of knowledge of typefaces is helpful to narrow down the typefaces was generated by statistical methods, as factor selection of the correct typeface. analysis, cluster analysis, and quantification theory Type I. In recent decades, practitioners in the fields of marketing, Furthermore, as the anatomy of Latin typeface, design business and professional design, have made attempts to characteristics including the detail parts in representative explore the notion of typeface appropriateness. Most letters were analyzed. The relationships between human research on fonts is related to legibility and readability [4, 5]. tastes and these design characteristics is analyzed to have In research [6], the researchers had an emotional testing strong correlations. Based on these affective knowledge, experiments for 1278 fonts using crowdsourcing platform. we developed a guidelines for typeface design. Besides Latin typeface, there are some studies on the affec- tive impressions of other language systems, as Japanese 2. AFFECTIVE EVALUATION FOR TYPEFACES [7, 8]. While there are thousands of fonts and it continues to increase, it costs a lot to evaluate them one by one. In the 2.1 Typeface selection typography design, most fonts remain the same components Since there are thousands of different typefaces available, or design characters in glyphs essentially. It is considered it is important to have an understanding of the basic styles of that these components are the root reason bringing different typefaces to help narrow down the research. The thing is, emotional responds. With these in-depth knowledge, the there is no one font classification system to rule them all. taste of an unevaluated font can be estimated. In fact there is a huge number of classification systems. Received: 2016.05.31 / Accepted: 2017.03.02 Copyright © 2017 Japan Society of Kansei Engineering. J-STAGE Advance Published Date: 2017.04.14 121 All Rights Reserved. International Journal of Affective Engineering Vol.16 No.2 In general, typefaces can be classified into 5 groups, as Serif, Table 1: Overview of typeface classification Sans-serif, Script, Blackletter, and Display types. Certainly, Classification Typeface Sample these groups can have subdivisions. In this study, 36 type- Garamond faces were chosen as the evaluation targets which are widely Old Roman Palatino used in DTP (Desktop Publishing) or having a profound Caslon impact on the development of typeface design. All these typefaces and their classifications are shown in Table 1. Baskerville Times New Serif type has a small line attached to the end of a stroke Transitional Roman in a letter which is called a serif. Sans-serif type is a Georgia typeface without serifs. Serif and Sans-serif types are widely used for text body and title in book, magazine, Bodoni Serif newspaper, etc. They also play an important role in Didot Modern corporate identity. For example, Didot is used in the logo Trajan of VOGUE, a famous fashion magazine, and Helvetica Onyx is also a popular choice for brand logos like BMW, Rockwell Panasonic, McDonald’s, and so on. Therefore, Serif and Sans-serif types have a large proportion in this work. Slab-serif Super Clarendon Serif fonts can be broadly classified into 4 subgroups, as Courier old roman or called old style, transitional, modern and Copperplate Wedge-serif slab/wedge-serif. Old roman type is characterized by Gothic Franklin Grotesque a low contrast in stroke weight and angled serifs. Gothic Transitional type is in between old roman and modern. Helvetica Modern type is characterized by high contract thick and Neo- Univers thin lines. Slab-serif or called Egyptian type has heavy Grotesque serifs which are originally intended as attention grabbing Arial designs for posters. Wedge-serif is a special type that Gill Sans its heavy strokes have tiny serifs at the ends and it is Optima classified together with slab-serif types here. Sans- Humanist serif Formata Sans-serif type has become the most prevalent for text display on computer screens. It can be divided into 3 or 4 Rotis major groups. Grotesque and neo-grotesque types are Futura sometimes treated as a group. Grotesque type is the first Avenir commercially popular Sans-serif type and neo-grotesque Geometric type is an extension to the grotesque style. Humanist type Eurostile includes proportions that were modeled on old roman DIN type. Geometric type, as its name implies, is based on Formal Shelley geometric forms, like near-perfect circle and square. Script Andante Script type is created by handwriting style, and 2 type- Script faces are chosen as cases of formal and casual styles. Casual Script Zapfino Blackletter, also known as Gothic script, is a highly ornamental type. It mainly includes 4 styles, as Textura, Textura Old English Black Rotunda, Schwabacher, and Fraktur. Here, 2 typefaces of letter American Rotunda Textura and Rotunda are chosen which are still used in Text Monotype OCRA some contemporary design works. Display type is a generalized concept that many type- Imprint Effect Shadow faces can be defined as display faces with associative and Umbra Display decorative values. Some of them are re-creation works Broadway based on the traditional types. Since it can’t be exhaustive, Decorative Chiller 6 typefaces are chosen in this work as an initial explora- Papyrus tion for display type. 122 International Journal of Affective Engineering Vol.16 No.2 Images and Anatomy of Latin Typefaces 2.2 Kansei evaluation and affective ranking For kansei evaluation experiment, 36 samples as the evaluation targets were made for each typeface with the size of 960 pixels × 460 pixels. They are made as an essay of cafe containing all letters of the alphabet and numeric characters. Figure 1 is the sample of Helvetica. The title is in uppercase including W, C, M, Q, O, which have typical design characteristics. The text body is in lowercase, and including the distinctive uppercase H and G. It also Figure 1: Evaluation sample of Helvetica contains the base ten numerals. 30 kansei words shown in Table 2 were extracted to express the impressions on design tastes or images of typography. Table 2: Vocabulary of kansei words and top 3 typefaces for each image Image Typeface Japanese English 1st 2nd 3rd プリティ Pretty カジュアル Casual ダイナミック Dynamic ロマンチック Romantic マイルド Mild フェミニン Feminine ナチュラル Natural エレガント Elegant ゴージャス Gorgeous ワイルド Wild クラシック Classic フォーマル Formal ダンディ Dandy シック Chic フレッシュ Fresh クリア Clear モダン Modern ポップ Pop レトロ Retro ノーブル Noble フレンドリー Friendly コンテンポラリー Contemporary スタンダード Standard スタイリッシュ Stylish エクスプレッシブ Expressive 目をひく Attractive 読みやすい Readable 信頼できる Reliable 好き Like 美しい Beautiful 123 International Journal of Affective Engineering Vol.16 No.2 The investigation was executed by online questionnaire Table 3: Factor loadings by varimax rotation survey by 5 scales, as 1=not feel at all, 2=not feel too Kansei words Factor1 Factor2 Factor3 Factor4 much, 3=feel somewhat, 4=quite feel, 5=strongly feel, and gorgeous 1.005 -0.293 -0.035 0.143 entrusted to a marketing research company, Macromill. elegant 1.001 -0.135 0.043 -0.092 It was conducted for 88 graphic designers and editorial romantic 0.974 -0.284 0.238 -0.115 designers.