Here it is, folks. My latest contribution to the overpopulated world of fonts and things. Ryno Slab. A super tough slab serif that’ll set solid on your posters, t-shirts, album covers, and headlines. If you would like to purchase Ryno Slab, maybe you’d like a discount (for a limited time). Take this Tough Characters Test and win a coupon code. The answer to every question is one single character that you could type on your keyboard. It could be a number, letter, symbol, or punctuation. Be warned, it’s damn tough. Just like Ryno Slab. Buy it!.
Optical illusions influence to many aspects of type design. Overshoot, for instance, compensates for the extra white space generated by a curve. Letters are tweaked to overcome the illusion of extra weight wherever two strokes meet. While most typographers’ interests lie in the delicate balance of black and white, I decided to experiment with letters in a slightly different way. What if gestalt principles and color theory illusions were applied directly to letters? These kinds of optical illusions are pretty commonplace, but it’s a lot more fun when letters are added to the mix. Introducing my updated collection of typographic illusions.
Look at the four words on the left and say them out loud. Go on, really — read it aloud. Clearly pronounce the first, second, third and fourth word. Then you may continue to the next paragraph. Go on, I’ll wait…
Good. Now how many of you failed to notice that the last word is not a name, but a regular word? Yes, the first three are names, but the last is a simple adjective. If you ended up pronouncing it incorrectly, you should be ashamed of yourself. Or maybe not, everyone does it.
When we see letters, we can’t help but read them. When we’re asked to look at letters and complete a cognitive task other than reading, it goes against our very nature. The Stroop test taught us that. So here’s a challenge. Designers are used to seeing the name of a typeface set in the font itself. Can we identify the typeface used when the word is, say, hamburger? Easy. But what if the word is the name of another font? Let’s take a moment to turn off our left-brained urges and put our typeface-identification skills to the test. Because our brain only has a handful of colors to choose from in the original Stoop test, I’m limiting the type choices to just three heavy weights of classic typefaces: Clarendon, Bodoni, And Franklin Gothic. They’re different enough to be obvious but hopefully similar enough for my mischief.
Instructions: When the test starts, identify the typefaces that the words are set in. You have 10 seconds.
