zuzana licko

Intervista alla celebre disegnatrice di font, che nel volume Émigré Graphics, Graphic Design into Digital Realm (Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York 1993) afferma: “Typefaces are not intrinsically legible. Rather, it is the reader’s familiarity with typefaces that accounts for their legibility. Studies have shown that readers read best what they read most. Legibility is also a dynamic process, as readers’ habits are everchanging. It seems curious that blackletter typestyles, which we find illegible today, were actually preferred over more humanistic designs during the eleventh and fifteenth centuries. Similarly, typestyles that we perceive as illegible today may well become tomorrow’s classic […] You read best what you read most. However, those preferences for typefaces such as Times Roman exist by habit, because those typefaces have been around longest. When those typefaces first came out, they were not what people were used to either. But because they got used, they have become extremely legible”.