LCARS font

[Bill Morris]

I'm trying to design a new base font for my LCARS system as a possible replacement for the existing 14-point font used for labels, etc. It has to be well formed in LCARS style yet sufficiently legible. Here are four versions of my first attempt and a sample of the old base font. This has nothing to do with TrueType, etc., and it's only for display on monitors.

I think the fourth version is the most legible, even though the differences among them are slight. Anyway, I thought the Art forum here would be the best place to get advice on this.

 

[USS Jack Riley]

LCARS 24 - If you could make the sample bigger (or link it to a site with a larger version), I know that I would appreciate it. Aside from my sone taking the opportunity to see how far see could stick his thumb into my eye this morning, I am getting old and can't see any different between the fonts. The other thing I might suggest is that you put the alphabet and numbers of the new font next to (or preferably over) the old font for an easier comparison.

Personally, I blame my old eyes on this one.

 

[FalTorPan]

Your revised font is a bit easier to read than the other. Having said that, I wonder why the TNG artists decided to use that style of font to begin with. On the whole, it's way too difficult to read, especially with most LCARS displays consisting of only uppercase letters.

 

[Philo]

^ That may be one of the reasons they did use it, actually. Don't necessarily want the audience reading the mumbo-jumbo screens.

EDIT: Sorry, LCARS, I forgot to comment on the topic. I have fantastic eyesight and even I can't see much of a difference between the four, practically speaking. That said, I think the first is the most legible because it's the least anti-aliased, but obviously you want a certain degree of that so it's a tough choice.

 

[Bill Morris]

Okay, here's the first version (top left and blown up 6 times below) and the old font (top right). I widened the E, F, and L, even though the canon font has them as I had them before.

And here are two usage examples of the old font. This 14-point font is normally used in black on bracket labels and buttons, but here it's in color on black, and the brackets have the 15-point version, which is too tall (by one pixel!) for buttons and a lot of other things in the system.

(Click up for full size)
http://i299.photobucket.com/albums/mm309/LCARS24/DELTALC5.png

This shows it on split-screen brackets and buttons, where 15-point is too tall, as well as an example of the scalable LCARS font (at top right).

(Click up for full size)
http://i299.photobucket.com/albums/mm309/LCARS24/shuttle.png

 

[Philo]

However you look at it, all four versions of your new font look ten times better than the old one, which, as you said, is too large as well as too aliased. To my eye it even looks more accurate. A lot of the LCARS fonts floating around never seemed condensed enough to me.

 

[Bill Morris]

I should wait a few years, for really high-res monitors. I have a very clear 17-point version of this font, but that's too tall for what I need now (people only install LCARS 24 on junk computers).

Anyway, here's another version, with a new round of tweaks.

 

[Jadzia]

I think AlternateGothic is quite similar to the LCARS font -- similar enough for normal people anyway

As for why they used this font -- well I've always associated with the advance of the information age into the 24th century. Increase in data means increase in information displayed to us, so typefaces become steadily condensed to make more type fit. You know, for as long as I remember I've intuitively felt that and never questioned it until today.

Its quite possible that in the real world, something similar will happen with printed text. We already have text message language -- a condensed language as far as word length goes. I expect we'll also see typeface condensing, as well as maybe letter merging like the old english 'ae' etc I do already do this with -it-, where I usually write t with a dot over it, and -mm- I write as a single letter with three arches. There are various letter contractions i use, but that's just me. :P

Hello everyone too, as I haven't been here for a while.

Hope everyone is ok?

 

[FalTorPan]

As for why they used this font -- well I've always associated with the advance of the information age into the 24th century. Increase in data means increase in information displayed to us, so typefaces become steadily condensed to make more type fit. You know, for as long as I remember I've intuitively felt that and never questioned it until today.

Yeah, but squashing them only along the horizontal axis -- and using all capital letters -- decreases readability. A screen might accommodate more text information with such a font, but what good is any of that information if you can't easily read it? :P

 

[Jadzia]

There may be laws made in the future in response to the diminishing size of print, and some standard minimum point sizes are made law for specific kinds of notification.

But many people will be up in arms about it, as they have to print twice as many pages to make their newspapers, and so the prices go up, and it wastes twice as much paper, and the government gets flamed by the anti-carbon committee, with letters of complaint that are now twice as long.

As point size is about letter height only, only the letter height is law. People react by squashing their text in the horizontal axis only.

Capitals may be another product of youth culture, questioning:

"Why have two copies of the same letter? We've got this latent inefficiency in the language of the digital world, innit? If we had capital 1s and 0s at the beginning of bytes, it'd be stupid, and this is just as stupid."


So capitals become standard, and lowercase fades out of use.

 

[FalTorPan]

I don't buy it, but we can agree to disagree.

 

[Jadzia]

^I dont agree to that. :P

 

[Bill Morris]

Okay, I think I've gotten somewhere with the old font. How's this?