Legibility – Ben Logan

Try it for yourself

This typeface was a personal project to improve the distinguishability between similar characters and character combinations in a sans-serif font. The result is what I consider to be a “semi-serif” font that is geometric and has larger descenders and more leading than typical for conventional typefaces such as Roboto or Helvetica.

Uppercase i next to lowercase L – Legibility

“RN” vs “M” added serif feature distinguishes the lowercase R character

“RN” vs “M” – large x-height and narrow spacing makes characters difficult to distinguish.

The areas of particular interest were differentiation between the uppercase I (i) and the lowercase l (L) in many fonts they are near indistinguishable: Il . While serif fonts better differentiate these characters they may be undesirable for certain applications. While I studied the topic of character legibility if found other issues with legibility across certain combinations of characters, such as “rn” vs. “m”.

While there is some subjectivity involved with the creation of a typeface, I believe that based on my research and testing the resulting Legibility typeface reduces the most common legibility issues through carefully integrated serifs and exaggerated descenders.