Some of the resources developed by Jeanne-Louise Moys for systematically testing readers’ impressions of typographic layout
Jeanne-Louise Moys’s doctoral research features in Design Week’s recent post on ‘Searching for new perspectives in typography’. Design writer Rick Poyner highlights some of Jeanne-Louise’s early findings and their implications for typographic research and practice. When Jeanne-Louise started her research there was a substantial body of studies looking at how choice of typeface – and typeface ‘personality’ – affected people’s perceptions of documents. In her Phd (completed in 2012) Jeanne-Louise looked at a much wider range of typographic variables than just choice of typeface; for example, how much variation there was in type size or style within a page. She found such variables influenced people’s perceptions in quite systematic ways. Rick suggests that more research is needed to extend the application of Jeanne-Louise’s work to different typographic materials. That’s underway, with Jeanne-Louise’s further research already published in Visible Language and other projects by CIDR researchers well on their way to publication.