Type on a computer vs being on print - Sidney Ting

Carrying on from does type really matter, I thought about type in different environments and something that caught my eye was type on computer vs type on printed material. The most obvious difference is that type on a computer is limited by pixels and it has to be read on the screen, while type on print is physical and has less limitations on how you can manipulate the text.

Type on a computer is often just about legibility of the information on the screen. How websites and documents are laid out and what text you are using is very important. Take this blog for example, right now when I am writing this post the only available typefaces that i can use to present are; Arial, Courier, Georgia, Helvetica, Times, Trebuchet and Verdana. These typefaces are considered 'safe' to use when typing something destined for the web. Why these typefaces are consider safe is because of how legible they are. Computers work on pixels and often detail from complex or smaller types get lost because there aren't enough pixels to show each letter clearly. Even on a HD screen this is still a problem because it still runs on pixels. Anti-alising of typefaces reduce the amount of detail lost but doesn't fix the problem completely. How we read on the internet is also very different to how we read physical print. On a computer you are not restricted to flipping pages in a book or turning a piece of paper around, on a computer you have the power of digital 3D. Having multiple interactions on one page is possible, example being linking another article to a keyword instead of citing it at the end of a piece of text or rearranging text around a page if it doesn't look correct. Here are some sites that I think are good examples of what I have explained.

ign.com
abduzeedo.com
en.wikipedia.org

Type in print is the original way of presenting type. Typography on computer is new compared to printing type. Type on print is really just limited to what you can think up because of its physical nature, its a completely different way of interacting with the text then if it were on a computer. Printed text has a long history of experimentation and phases that is still happening. From this history we have created standards and rules on what will look good compared to what will look bad. In the book 'History of Graphic Design' by Philip Meggs he looks at the progression of design through time. The way information can be presented is so different to what can be achieved if you did it on the web. Looking at the work from the Bauhaus in the book, there experimentation in type placement was innovative and something you couldn't present on a computer screen with the same effect.

Herbert Bayer of Bauhaus

Herbert Bayer of Bauhaus

Example website

Sources
http://alistapart.com/column/responsive-typography-is-a-physical-discipline
http://typographymatters.com/
http://www.moma.org/collection/artist.php?artist_id=399
History of graphic design by Philip B Meggs. 1998