How typography can save your life

In our blog we write about various aspects of working with mailing lists - from typesetting letters to typography . The last topic is very interesting and extensive - the importance of working with the text of the letter is difficult to overestimate. However, typography plays a big role not only on the Internet - today we’ll talk about how it can actually save lives.

After several decades of “screaming,” the US National Meteorological Service recently announced that it will no longer publish its forecasts and weather warnings in capital letters only. Since May 11, all of her messages have been published in mixed register.

This is not to say that the habit of the weather service to write about its forecasts in capital letters was completely her decision. Old equipment used at the time of service in the late 1800s could only produce capital letters. Unfortunately, people are used to the fact that a set of capital letters should be taken as a scream . It took a long time before the weather service and its customers updated the equipment and software, and now they are finally ready to enter the 20th century.



Record of the National Weather Service on Twitter: “Starting May 11, the National Weather Service @NOAA [NOAA - US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - approx. perev.] will stop shouting at you "

For designers around the world, this was the greatest victory in the history of typography that we have not seen since Massimo Vignelli came up with a new design for the New York metro scheme. This may be an exaggeration, but typography is so important that sometimes a person’s life even depends on it.

A weather service using only capital letters is practically a version of the “Boy who shouted:“ Wolves! ”, Only from the world of typography. If you type all the texts in uppercase - starting from a warning about a dangerous hurricane to reporting a small rainfall - then everything will look equally important. People understand that in most cases this is not so, therefore they can become indifferent to any warnings. When nothing stands out, it is much easier to overlook the real threat.

Now that the weather service can correctly use the messages typed in capital letters - for example, as a means to indicate real danger - the public is more likely to pay attention to them.

“We realized that we can still use messages from capital letters in case we need to highlight an event, for example:“ ATTENTION! THREAT TO TORNADO. HIDE EVERYBODY! ”Says Art Thomas, a meteorologist at the national service responsible for implementing the project. “We hope that the use of capital letters will attract people's attention at particularly important points and will encourage them to take care of their safety.”



Examples of using the weather service of upper and mixed case in local weather forecasts. Source: NOAA

Timely pressing the Caps Lock key is not just a useful strategy to draw attention to the necessary events, but also a method to facilitate the perception of the text. Considering that when reading we pay attention to the form of a word, large blocks of text consisting only of capital letters are read more slowly. In an emergency, extra time to decrypt an urgent message can cost us dearly.



Uppercase text is harder to read than mixed-case text.

Of course, if your goal is to convey a message that is hard to read, then uppercase is ideal. Capital warning companies hide, intentionally or not, important information from buyers.

The following is a version of a warning from the US Department of Health that is mentioned in Edward Tufty's famous Visual Explanations . This warning is shown on one of the billboards: the message was specially highlighted in capital letters, underlined below, and its borders highlighted in black.



A warning about the dangers of smoking, which is difficult to read. Source: Visual Explanations

Since 1984, each pack of cigarettes was supposed to contain one of four special warnings about the dangers of smoking, including the inscription in capital letters “the Ministry of Health warns”. In 2009, US President Barack Obama signed a new law requiring manufacturers of larger labels withclear graphics. However, tobacco companies started a litigation, and since then the issue of introducing new labels has remained open.

Company representatives say they are trying to “highlight” important messages using upper case. That is why so many legal documents and contracts include sections that seem to shout at the reader. You can blame American law for this - in particular, the Uniform Trade Code - which requires certain sections of contracts to “ stand out clearly ”.

Typically, these instructions apply to those parts of the documents that read as follows: "Company X does not guarantee that it will keep its promises, and all the risk lies with you." It is logical that such sections should not be overlooked. There is one thing but: if you "clearly distinguish" the text, then it becomes more difficult to read. The reason for this is the historical confusion. Legally, the law defines the following distinctly “distinctive” concepts:

• “(A) an uppercase title equal to or larger than the surrounding text, or distinguished by style, font or color from the surrounding text of the same or smaller size, and
• (B) the inscription is larger than the text surrounding it, or distinguished by style, font or color from the text of the same size surrounding it, or separated from the surrounding text of the same size by symbols or signs that draw attention to what is written. ”

So why do we use uppercase rather than bold, italics, or even text highlighting tools? Just because lawyers used to use typewriters, and the only way to highlight anything at that time was to use capital letters. Despite the fact that today modern typing devices can “clearly distinguish” a message in other ways, the established tradition is difficult to break. You can ask about it in the weather service.



Common situation? Blame typewriters and stubborn lawyers. Source: iTunes Terms and Conditions

But let's digress from the uppercase letters and move on, perhaps, to the most famous place where choosing a font can save a person’s life - to the roads.

Since the 1950s in the United States, all road signs were printed in Highway Gothic - this was the most common font until the early 2000s. But with him there were some problems. Drivers noticed or not, but the inscriptions made with this font were hard to read in rainy weather, at a distance and in the dark. When the light hit the road sign, the words mixed into one luminous, blurry mess, which is called the "halo" [Eng. halation]. For an ordinary person, such an inscription will cause slight irritation, but if you are an elderly person with poor eyesight, traveling at a speed of 70 miles per hour, this can lead to sad consequences.

For a long time, road engineers could not find a way out of this situation. They thought about making the letters 20% larger, but for this they would have to make larger signs, which would cost several billion dollars. Therefore, they decided to turn to designers - specialists in ecography and typography. These designers developed Clearview, a new font headset that occupies the same space as Highway Gothic, but is easier to read.



Highway Gothic (left) compared to Clearview's new alternative headset. Source: Termimal Design, Inc .

One of the most important changes in the new headset was the expansion of the space inside the letters - the so-called counter -space, for example, voids in the letters O or P. In addition, the designers adjusted the height of the upper detail elements, as in the letters b, d, f, h, as well as the space between the letters. As a result, all these changes, taken together, seem to have borne fruit. After numerous trials in bad weather and other weather conditions, Clearview became a headset that improved the clarity of inscriptions while reading, and also reduced the reaction time and the distance at which the inscription can be recognized. Soon on many highways of the country, inscriptions made in Clearview font appeared.



The first Clearview in vivo tests. Source: Terminal Design, Inc .

But not for long. US Federal Highway Administration Announces This Yearthat it will not require that the labels on all signs be in Clearview font. They attributed this to the “often confusing and contradictory design of road signs, the processes of their production and application.” Management also provides some evidence that Clearview doesn’t make reading characters much easier at night. Thus, the Office actually puts an end to innovations in typography, arguing that "it is not going to take part in the consideration, development and support of alternative writing styles in the future."

However, attempts to create a headset that can save a human life continue to be made in the road environment - this time inside the car. In 2012, scientists from MIT began working with the Monotype printing company to solve the problem of driver distraction. They thought that if they succeeded in developing a readable display design inside the vehicle, drivers would spend less time trying to recognize the words on the screen and more time would follow the road. In order to facilitate the receipt of information from the screens, two organizations tried to change the fonts.

They settled on the “humanistic” style, in which the distance between the characters was greater and the glyphs were more distinguishable. According to researchHumanistic styles are more readable than square and geometric fonts widely used in automobile manufacturing. The illustration from a joint article by MIT and Monotype shows differences in counterspaces and other subtleties that affect readability: The



square font (Eurostile) at the top compared to the humanistic font (Frutiger) at the bottom. Source: Monotype Imaging

The new humanist fonts, as it turned out, worked well. The total time for looking up, that is, how much time the driver did not look at the road, was reduced by half a second for male drivers who took part in the experiment (women showed the same results). The time difference was about 12%. It may seem insignificant, but half a second means 50 feet for an average car on the highway. The length of two cars could cost a person life.



Even NASA understands the importance of typography very well: they have a whole report for this - “About typography of documentation in the cockpit”. In this report, a scientist from NASA Asaph Dehghani (Asaf Degani) said: "Although the documentation in the cockpit is an important (and sometimes necessary) form of displaying information in today's crew cabin, efficient design of such documents is a matter of research until now."

Effective design in this case may actually be a necessity. The report describes the accident that occurred on May 26, 1987, when the 962 aircraft of Air New Orleans departed for Florida. Even before the plane reached a height of several hundred feet, the pilot was forced to make an emergency landing. During the landing, the plane drove to the nearest freeway and destroyed several vehicles.

It turned out that the crew forgot to turn the engine control lever. The National Transport Safety Council called this situation “lack of discipline in checking on-board documentation.” What is the reason? Answer: poor design. Here's how the Security Council responded:

“The font in the Air New Orleans documentation is 57% smaller than needed when compared with ergonomic requirements. A smaller print reduces readability even under optimal conditions. Evidence that a low level of readability played a role in the incident was not found. Nevertheless, the Security Council believes that under certain operating conditions, this flaw could prevent the document from fulfilling its main task. Therefore, the Security Council believes that the US Federal Aviation Administration should take measures to determine whether aircraft documentation complies with accepted ergonomic requirements.



The Air New Orleans documentation was hard to read, as the font size in it was 57% less than recommended. Source: NASA

Despite the fact that NASA probably also has a number of other unresolved safety issues, Degani emphasizes the role of typography in ensuring the safety of pilots and passengers: “The efficiency and accuracy of reading lists, maps, airport diagrams, flight plans, refueling sheets, waybills, etc. etc., partially depend on typographic and graphic factors. Moreover, in the event of an accident or emergency, the effectiveness of the crew in the processes of evaluating, reading, perceiving and following instructions is essential for safety in flight. ”

At the end of the report he gives recommendations, starting with the length of the line and ending with the choice of font color and the presence of serifs (by the way, he is against using upper case, read recommendation No. 4). Below is a complete list of these recommendations:

NASA guidelines for on-board documentation

1. Sans serif fonts are usually easier to read than serif fonts.
2. Try not to use fonts where the characters are too similar to each other, as this will reduce the readability of the printed text.
3. Try not to print critical documentation on a dot matrix printer.
4. Long fragments of text are preferably written in lower case.
5. If you want to use uppercase, the first letter of the word must be larger so that the word is easier to read.
6. When choosing the font height, it is necessary to take into account the ratio of the growth of lowercase letters to the growth of capital letters.
7. As a general recommendation, when preparing important documentation, the growth of lowercase letters should be at least 0.10 inches.
8. The recommended ratio of the height of the characters of the font to their width is 5: 3.
9. Line spacing should be at least 25-33% of the total font size.
10. The horizontal spacing between the characters should be 25% of the total area and be no less than the width of one stroke.
11. Try not to write long text in italics.
12. If possible, use 1-2 headsets to highlight text.
13. In most documents, use black characters on a white background.
14. Try not to use white characters on a black background when describing standard procedures during flight. In case it is necessary:

1. Use a minimum of text;
2. Use a relatively large size;
3. Use sans-serif fonts to reduce loss of readability.

15. The documentation recommends using a black font on a white or yellow background.
16. Try not to use black font on dark red, green and blue background.
17. Use anti-glare plastic to protect documents.
18. Ensure that paper and print quality are above standard. Poor print quality will affect the readability of the text.
19. The designer should take into account the age characteristics of the pilots who will read the documentation, and choose a more conservative approach when evaluating statistical information.

Of course, there are countless examples of poor typography. Fortunately, only a few lead to accidents and confusion in emergency situations. But in such cases, even minor changes in the letter form or font style become important details. So keep that in mind the next time you press the Caps Lock key .