Vote for Your Favorite Typography Preferences
Here's an interesting idea. Text Prefs is an online typographic survey where you can choose your preferred text formatting — font, text size, line height, column width — and then vote for it.
According to the creators, Message, the site was developed because:
…we found there to be a distinct lack of hard facts about how online users prefer their text displayed…
Once there have been enough responses Message will summarize their findings in a report this summer.
Of course, the obvious flaw in this survey is that what constitutes the most appropriate typography depends on its context of use.
If more people vote for Verdana than, say, Georgia, does this mean you should never use the latter in your web designs? Of course not.
Still it will be interesting to see if there are any useful findings to come out. I am especially keen to see what can be learned about column widths. Stay tuned.
Posted on: June 15, 2008 | 9 Comments
Recent Entries in "Web General"
- Are These Really Web Sites of the World's Best Brands? (8)
- 12 Essential Web Site Building Blocks (18)
- What You Need to Know About Improving the User Experience (14)
- Write a Web Design Article and Win $1000 (5)
- Required Form Fields: Where Should the Asterisk Go? (36)
- Web Site Navigation Design Showcase (14)
- Great Resource for Writing Article Headlines (5)
- How Would You Link This Sentence? (11)
- Operation Immortality — Your Chance to be Immortal (5)
- CSS Rounded Corners 'Roundup' (82)
- Using a Background Image Grid to Lay Out Your Web Site (43)
- Typography for Headlines (40)
- Blog Comment Form Design Showcase (15)
- Blog Comment Design Showcase (36)
- How to Get a Job in the Web Industry (24)
- How to Create a Block Hover Effect for a List of Links (32)
- How to Write a Web Site Creative Brief (6)
- How to Style 'Author' Comments Differently on Your Blog (9)
- How to Style an A to Z Index with CSS (5)
- Designing Interfaces: Patterns for Effective Interaction Design
- Blog Design Solutions
- Designing Web Usability
- 101 Essential CSS Tips, Tricks, & Hacks
- Web Standards Solutions
- Web ReDesign 2.0: Workflow that Works
- The Zen of CSS Design
- Don't Make Me Think
- Bulletproof Web Design
- DOM Scripting
- View more recommended reading…
9 Comments Posted (Add Yours)
Well, another flaw is that the results of the survey will mostly depend on who will be participating.
I guess that that most of the voters will belong to the web designers community, making the results subjective as they, actually we, will submit our own preferences, not the preferences of our clients or the end users.
1. Posted by Sasa Bogdanovic on June 16, 2008
A truly objective survey would be very interesting, especially if we could compare the results to studies of how typography affects reading speed and comprehension. I've seen talk about that, but never citations of actual studies.
For that matter, I'd love to see studies on text and background color. How much contrast is best? Full on black and white can be harsh. Is something a little grey better?
2. Posted by Erik on June 17, 2008
Nice idea.... but I think there's something of a more fundamental flaw - in that the only people whose preferences it'll really gather are (dare I say 'us') techy or design geeks who are really bothered about this - it's not democratic and needs some validation as to who is submitting the prefs.
3. Posted by Dave Haygarth on June 19, 2008
well really nice..its an interesting idea. i will try
4. Posted by Kirk on June 20, 2008
It's worth to try.
It is interesting even if results depend on who participates in survey.
5. Posted by Else on June 24, 2008
i will try.It looks like interesting. try
6. Posted by levy on June 26, 2008
Oh. i see. this is a new idea for me... nice nice I will try it for sure...
7. Posted by Erickson Juricks2Web on July 07, 2008
I agree with hwat you say about the contextual nature of text formating.
Its an easy enough survey to complete but it all depends where they text is and how it fits with a larger design thats important. Look forward to seeing what results come from this
8. Posted by Matthew 'Web Design' Adams on July 08, 2008
Surveys are great for getting a topic buzzing. But you still have to take into account who is completing the survey - is it a designer or an average user. Even then, where are they located and how does that affect the result?
9. Posted by Rexibit Web Services on July 22, 2008