Visual reference
If you have been puzzled by Mona Lisa’s smile – how she’s radiant one moment and serious the next instant – then your worries are over. It happens because our eyes are sending mixed signals to the brain about her smile.
Different cells in the retina transmit different categories of information or “channels” to the brain. These channels encode data about an object’s size, clarity, brightness and location in the visual field.
The image on the left is the regular Mona Lisa. Image in the center has a subtly emphasized smile and the image on the right has an even more emphasized. I was surprised at how much her face changed even with a minute pixel shift…
This has me wondering just how much we underestimate subtle differences in typefaces that can effect legibility and potentially comprehension. By default we create a visual database of what various typefaces look like. Subconsciously our brain compares whatever we see with our accumulated visual database. Subtle differences are conceivably noticed but necessarily rejected as abnormal. Naturally over time our point of reference changes as we accumulate more information. So our accepted standards today will no doubt vary from 5 years ago. In other words, the most frequently viewed typefaces will form the foundation of our current visual standards.
Moritz Resl created composites of over 900 fonts well worth viewing:
http://www.moritzresl.net/average-font/
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18019-mona-lisas-smile-a-mystery-no-more.html
