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Letter processing and font information during reading: beyond distinctiveness, where vision meets design

This review paper represents a collaboration between the two authors, and addresses the contribution that design knowledge can make to psychological theories of letter processing. It is significant in building a bridge between design and vision science. Drawing on the empirical work of the first author, a US psychologist, Dyson incorporates principles from the field of type design and in particular the paper discusses the uniformities across letters within a font. In the psychological literature, previous research and theory has focused on the concept of distinctiveness in letterforms, i.e. making letters easier to discriminate from other letters in the alphabet. The argument put forward in the paper is that type designers recognise the importance of distinctiveness, but also emphasise the stylistic commonalities that characterise a font. Through introducing this aspect of design knowledge and discussing how it can be applied to scientific research, the paper exemplifies the benefits of collaborating across disciplines.