Font smoothing [font]

Description

Font smoothing or rasterization is mainly seen with electronic displays or other displays using pixels or points to form the characters. It is a means to control irregularities and roughness on characters due to pixel or point configuration. Three main types of smoothing are: aliased, grayscale and ClearType™. Aliased fonts use black and white pixels leaving irregular strokes. Grayscale smoothing uses different shades of gray for the surrounding pixels to smooth the irregularities in the character strokes. ClearType™ smoothing, introduced by Microsoft, uses different shades and colors for the surrounding subpixels to smooth the irregularities in character strokes. In addition to ClearType™, other trademarked font smoothing techniques exist, but they are not explicated here. Examples of font smoothing are presented by O'Regan et al. (1996) and Sheedy et al. (2008).

Importance

Identifying the type of font smoothing that allow a better visibility, legibility and readability of text will aid designers in developing Universally Designed signs and displays.

Related Guidelines

Products

• Computer and electronic displays (CRT, LCD and electronic display device)
• Permanent building signage
• Print
• Tactile signs
• Warnings on product

Infrastructure

• Highway and street signage

Research and Development Needs

References

O'Regan, Kevin, Nicole Bismuth, Roger D. Hersch, and Alexandros Pappas. 1996. Legibility of perceptually-tuned grayscale fonts, 1:537-540. Lausanne, Switz: IEEE, Los Alamitos, CA, USA.

Sheedy, Jim, Yu-Chi Tai, Manoj Subbaram, Sowjanya Gowrisankaran, and John Hayes. 2008. Cleartype sub-pixel text rendering: Preference, legibility and reading performance. Displays 29, no. 2: 138-151.

Links

Author

• Caroline Joseph, M.A. Sc.
• Beth Tauke, M.A., M.F.A.
• Edward H. Steinfeld, Arch.D., AIA

Editorial Board Review Status

"In Development"