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The elementary unit of letter construction is the basic anatomical features of letterforms. The letter identification is a process of decoding and encoding of the anatomical information of the letters. They are the fundamental components of letter identification. This paper explains the process of Bengali letter identification and reveals the crucial anatomical features for design purposes. Here, an eye-tracking study has been conducted to identify the involvement of letter features in reading. In order to reveal the letter features, we exposed the letters under low contrast conditions to establish the consequence of anatomical features. The objective of the experiment is to identify the important letters features during the reading process that aids the letter identification task. A total number of six participants had performed the task under low contrast condition, and data was captured using an eye-tracking device. The aim of the paper is to understand the role of anatomical features in the letter identification process, so that such information can be useful for the Type designers. Type designers are designers who design typefaces and develop fonts for everyday use. The saccades, fixation, and heat-signature data from eye-tracking study have provided two major sets of information—(1) a list of letter features (individually) involved in the letter identification process, (2) a list of common and unique letter features across all Bengali letters. The result indicates that there is an active involvement of letter-parts and features in the letter identification process, and the list of common and distinctive letter features has been prepared to guide the type designers. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

Design

(SoHSS) School of Humanities and Social Sciences

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Smart Innovation, Systems and Technologies

The Role of Letter Anatomy in Type Design: An Eye-Tracking Study of Bengali Letters

This study explores the co-existent nature of emotions and cognition in humans to build and propose a framework that helps correlate ‘likeability’ and ‘sellability’ of a product by introduction of a relatively new term—unique selling factor (USF). The framework runs on context-based logical correlations among its constituents. The aim of this framework is to qualitatively express the emotional characteristics of a product. As emotions work alongside with cognition, the design attributes of the product under the lenses are first analysed as per the three levels of our brain’s processing. Each design feature corresponds to the processing level based on the consumers’ probable preferences to choose that feature in the first place. After this cognitive breakdown, we further diverge the semantic analysis at emotional levels. Each design feature when stated with the consumers’ probable preference and the cognition level involved can now help develop context of the scenario. This context that triangulates the connect between the design feature, consumers’ preference and processing level plays significant role as the backbone of emotionality in the analysis overall. To apply the understanding built, a logical study is done considering a black V-neck T-shirt as the product under the lenses. For this product, we define the likeability, sellability and the unique selling factor. For analysis, we create a feature analysis table that subdivides the product features first, into its design characteristics. Second, against these characteristics are explored the probable reasons the consumer might have had for opting for those characteristics. Third, each reason for the preference for its respective design characteristic is assigned to its corresponding levels of brain processing. Fourth, for the context developed so far, we can assign emotions involved. The co-existence of emotion and cognition paves way for this product-semantic design language. Thus, the framework proposed works evidently on emotion and cognition and helps provide a novel perspective—that of the most significant stakeholder of all—the customer and the people we design for. The framework follows an ecosystemic approach that provides it with appropriate literature and a holistic approach. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

Product Semantics: The Emotional Design Language

Typefaces are the primary means of reading. Without a quality display of the typeface on the display screen, reading becomes difficult. The paper aims to identify the display issues with the Indian typefaces on display screens. Further, the paper encounters the challenges and difficulties in the type design process with Indian scripts. India is a multilingual country with various scripts. Indian letterform structures are complex and sinuous. In this paper, the technical challenges related to the design process of Indian typefaces such as hinting, glyph positioning and substitution have been discussed. Hinting is a challenging task for Indian scripts since the letter structures are complex. Developing glyphs substitution instructions is a tedious task due to the large number of characters set. In the context of letter design, Indian letters lack a letterform grammar and visual language of type forms. Anatomical nomenclature and grid system are the primary deficiency in the design process that hinders the quality font production. Apart from that, identification of the legibility parameters is required for the Indian scripts to make the letters reading friendly and visually enhancing. Research on Indian typeface legibility has not been studied extensively. Therefore, a review on the current issues and challenges of Indian typeface becomes essential. The present paper is an attempt to discuss the design challenges and display issues with the Indian typefaces. © 2021, The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Springer Series in Design and Innovation

Indian Typefaces in Digital Platforms: Issues and Challenges

This paper aims to identify the appropriateness of various parameters identified previously to define legibility in the context of Latin script done for the context of Indic typefaces like Bengali and Devanagari. The analysis is based on anatomical features, gridlines, letter binding, letter support, direction of stroke, stroke density, and variance. The paper also discusses various challenges of Indic scripts in terms of letter identification with respect to visibility and familiarity. Finally, various design parameters for identification are proposed for measurement of legibility of Bengali and Devanagari. The insight of the paper is to make type designers and researchers aware of effective design parameters that are necessary to understand during the design of Indic typeface. © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2017.

Legibility: Same for all scripts!

The anatomy of letterforms defines the structural formation of letters. The study is based on semiotic approach. The methods used here are Syntagmatic and Paradigmatic analysis. The anatomy is developed through analysis based on the work on Latin letterforms from three different aspect which are structural grid lines, anatomical features and parameters. This syntagmatic analysis is yielded in identification of various structural features of letterforms like terminal, bowl, blob, stem, dot or nukta, ascender and descender. The analysis has been carried out using two techniques, repeated forms and unique forms of letters. The paradigmatic analysis discusses the comparative study of structure and feature of letterforms across different typefaces such as Lohit Bengali, Vrinda, Solaimanlipi and etc. The analysis offers distinct anatomical nomenclatures after analyzing paradigmatic transformations. Further the study categorizes the letterforms according to the appearance of common features. © Springer India 2015.