In reply to Goudy Quote: Am I Being Too Harsh on Alexander Lawson?:
@Chris Dean:
I did not suggest that legibility research is pointless, nor that the study I cited was pointless. Indeed, I am a big fan of research and scientific method, and I believe it can and should be applied to typography and type design. When I heard about Sofie Beier’s new book on legibility and type design, I literally whipped out my iPhone on the spot, went online and bought it right then, while sitting in a bar at Type Tuesday in Portland. Said book is sitting about a foot from my elbow right now.
However, I *am* saying that we can never identify one lone truly perfect font for any application. We can understand what variables are in play in certain situations and identify key factors that make some fonts worse than others in those situations. But the notion that anyone could ever identify or create a single perfect font for an application, one that could never be excelled, seems to me to be absurd.
That does not mean we shouldn't keep on striving to make and choose better typefaces, btw. Just recognize that we will never reach perfection. It’s like there is an imaginary Platonic form of the best typeface for a given application. (Only worse because it will change over time and between viewers....)