Typography

Fonts aren’t really something you think about, but can play a huge role in the way a reader interprets a piece of writing. A scholarly essay wouldn’t be written in comic sans, but a comic book in Times New Roman would change the entire mood.

Like most students, my choice of font is usually what a professor dictates and I hadn’t really ever thought about how it could effect communication. Previous to this lesson I had never heard the term serif or sans-serif, much less could distinguish the two.

The first game I played was shoot the serif. I learned that serif fonts have feet and sans serif fonts do not. Visually, serif fonts tend to be easier to read in large blocks of text and are more academic looking: except for those fonts whose feet are swirls. Sans serif fonts are better for lines of text and are more visually interesting for advertisements.

The next game I played was Kern Type, which I actually enjoyed as lame as that is. Seeing the original. misaligned text actually made me cringe, so fixing it gave me some satisfaction. Kerning is also a completely new concept for me. I didn’t think the amount of space between letters would have it’s own term, but I realized that it actually makes a huge difference in text’s readability.

I saved the most difficult for last with Type War game. I only ever made it to level 6 and I hated every minute of it. But, I will admit that I started to be able to distinguish a couple of fonts after my 10th time going through, so there is a silver lining.