How We Read

I feel a little nerdier than usual when I blog something related to typography, but A List Apart had a good one.

Type and typography wouldn’t exist without our need to express and record information. Sure, we have other ways to do those things, like speech or imagery, but type is efficient, flexible, portable, and translatable. This is what makes typography not only an art of communication, but one of nuance and craft, because like all communication, its value falls somewhere on a spectrum between success and failure. The act of reading is beautifully complex, and yet, once we know how, it’s a kind of muscle memory. We rarely think about it. But because reading is so intrinsic to every other thing about typography, it’s the best place for us to begin. We’ve all made something we wanted someone else to read, but have you ever thought about that person’s reading experience? —A List Apart