High Trevor Gale, yes, it has been spoken about. New Look

Regards Nick.

Look again at the Stationary Engine article. I think it was made low contrast so parts of it could be emphasised in bold.

I suspect I’m not the only one among the, ahem, “more mature” members of our community who wishes the fashion for narrow stroke sans serif fonts would disappear back down the hole from hell it came from.

If I ever run into the guy or gal who decided it was a good idea to make lower case L and number 1 identical their vocabulary is going to be seriously expanded. And not in a good way!

The serifs on “old fashioned” fonts like Times are there for a reason. Times in particular was designed for readability. An important issue in the days when effective, accurate, vision correcting spectacles were not readily and affordably available so the needs of folk struggling with less than perfect or inadequately corrected vision were important.

Helvetica and its multitudinous relations are display fonts to be seen at a distance, not reading text fonts. Serifs are wrong for that sort of application. There superb Motorway and Transport fonts used on British road signs show how to do that job.

Clive

or is possibly the density of the print?

For equal legibility a thin stroke font requires higher acutance than a thick stroke one. For practical purposes more contrast, as in hard black against hard white compared to very dark grey on not quite white.

Acutance describes the steep ness of teh black-white transition rather than the absolute difference so it’s not quite the same as contrast. The various effects on visual processing and how hard the eyes have to work when reading are complex.

For ageing eyes thin stroke fonts are more tiring to read. The lower the acutance the more tiring it becomes.

A font with curvy joints between strokes and serifs tends to be less tiring due to having more visual cues as to what each letter is.

Clive

There is definitely still something odd about the typesetting in the paper version.

All article text, apart from some sidebars, seems to be set at about 10.5 points line spacing, but there is variation in font size and weight, presumably to neatly fit the page.

For example, Ron Fitzgerald’s piece, on pp 52 & 53, is in a considerably smaller font than other articles.

Milling in the Lathe on pp 9-13 is set consistently in a weight and size that I would say is ideal.

On page 14 in Meet the Editor there is a difference within one page. The first column is set in a lighter weight than the second and third columns, except for the last line which is in the heavier weight. The thicker strokes can easily be seen with a magnifying glass comparing those last two lines.

Does a tiny adjustment in font size result is a step change in weight?

As an older reader, as probably most of us are, I would prefer to see the heavier weight used consistently throughout, rather than condensing or lightening the font to cram every last corner of the page (if that is what is happening). This might mean slightly less content, a bit of white space here and there, and perhaps some split pages to tidy up loose ends. A consistent size and weight would also be aesthetically more satisfactory.

I should have said: 4763.

Given the capability of modern page makeup tools I can’t understand why the normal text typeface varies even between successive paragraphs in places. Section titles are rather intrusive. In places figure numbering is all over the shop. Generally the page layout looks old fashioned and dark. I only occasionally read the mags online through Libby and I don’t think my visits will be any more frequent now.