Welcome to the online spot of the research project
Typography in
Digital media are omnipresent. The rise of digital media went hand in glove with an evolutionary leap of typography: texts are read more and more on screen. Typefaces, originally designed for print media do not always work well on digital applications. After more than 500 years, type design needed to be revised and evaluated to cater to a digital environment. However, now we find ourselves at the brink of yet another typographical transformation: virtual reality (VR). VR is hot! The technology was already on the rise, but the worldwide Covid-19 outbreak has accelerated attention for VR and AR. People tend to be drawn to a headset proving them with a 360° experience, an experience in which text is being presented in a 3D environment. Typefaces, however, are developed to work in a two dimensional setting. How does a typeface act in a three dimensional habitat?
This is the main question that this two-year research project ‘Typo in VR’ has been researching. The first year, researchers Joke Gossé, Marijke De Bie and Nicky Lauwerijssen focused on developing a set of rules of thumb to improve legibility and readabilty of text in a VR setting. You can read about the research methods and results here. In the academic year 2019-2020, the project was continued by researchers Joke Gossé, Serge Van Camp and Tom Peeters, by developing a prototype of a typeface, designed for using and reading in VR, and a VR environment to display the typeface at its full potential. The results of our work will be published here in September 2020.
You can download our publication for free. We would like to gather some additional information, solely for the purpose of mapping the reach of our project.