The Science behind Fonts

I was always engulfed by a question on why academic and scholastic papers demand Times New Roman as a standard font, and why many publishers abide by it comprehensively.  

While many of us ignore the type of font used in any piece of writing - with that typical intent of focusing only on content and not on how it appears visually- scientifically, it has been witnessed that the visual appearance of the fonts generate much influence on how a document is received as equally as the content itself. Such scientific concepts and knowledge of font designs were conceived by the ancient premier publishing and printing houses many moons ago. And subsequently, the design of any fonts was considered very seriously on the basis of how it can produce mood and atmosphere, besides being readable and economical at large.

Before the period of global digitalization, history has it that, the only fonts available in the Microsoft Windows 3.1 were Ariel, Courier and Times New Roman. In the 1930s, the British based newspaper The Times used a font named ‘Times’, which shortly gathered massive criticism by Stanley Morrison, a native typographer, for being badly printed and typographically antiquated. The Times has asked Morison to design a better font in which the later with the help of an esteemed advertising designer, Victor Lardent conceptualized the new design of Times Old Roman (the font name referred after the new design) based on 2 major changes:

a) Readability: Morison and Lardent has reduced the space between each letter (technically called tracking) to make it condensed and readable, besides thinning the intersections of the thicker strokes of each letter to give it a legible look.

b) Efficiency: As a necessity in the newspaper business, to make it more economical, the number of words to fit on each line and thus on a page was maximized.

Later, this new font made its debut in the issue of The Times on 3^rd October 1932 and was popularly branded as Times New Roman thereafter. History has recorded that this font was tested by the ‘distinguished ophthalmic authority’ under the conditions of both natural and artificial light, and confirmed as the most readable font.  

So what makes Times New Roman a standard font for academia in most cases?  

One good reason could be its ubiquitousness. Microsoft has included it before the early digitalization and later made it the default font for being a widely used typeface across all space. So basically, Times New Roman was the granddaddy of the print fonts. Also, this font was readable in the sense that it allowed the readers to stay on the line of text or paragraphs for a longer period of time without any difficulty. As much as academic papers are published with the intent to express some findings and impart new knowledge to the readers, fonts such as Times New Roman is more apt and convincing to achieve such academic commitments.

“Typography is the craft of endowing human language with a durable visual form” – Robert Bringhurst

The Science behind Choosing Toys

Wondered why girls are drawn to baby dolls while boys are fascinated by guns, balls and toy cars as soon as they crawl?

Generally in our society, we have indoctrinated with a cultural and societal dogma that girls prefer kitchen toys or pink dolls and, boys picking up wheeled trucks, Legos, or balls, which is more kind of a traditional inheritance for gender classification that evolved alongside the process of evolution.

However, with an increasing number of scientific evidence obtained from various empirical studies, it has revealed that the children are born with gender-specific toys, meaning that the preference of the toys by both male and female is more likely influenced by biological (hormones or genes) reasons.   

The experiments conducted by some notable social scientists and psychologists involving the primates - primarily the rhesus and vervet monkeys (Alexander & Hines, 2002) – have found that the preference of the toys is more likely influenced by hormonal and genetic reasons. The ingenious study which got published in Evolution and Human Behavior stunned the scientific world by its findings as male monkeys preferred masculine toys while female monkeys chose feminine toys among those masculine, feminine and neutral toys.    

Later a study by Brenda and Sara (2010) has also reported to the British Psychological Association a similar finding that ‘the infants showed a strong preference for the toys which were stereotypically representative of their gender’. Of the infants (9-14 months) who were involved in the study, they found that the girls spent significantly longer playing with the dolls while the boys were gravitated towards playing car and balls. ‘The males through evolution have been adapted to prefer moving objects, probably through hunting instincts, while girls prefer warmer colours such as pink, the colour of a newborn baby’ the paper reported.   

  

Such studies have set up a momentum of a historic breakthrough in establishing the relation of toys based on gender.  

In the field of Health and Physical Education, such biological bias for their choices in children is also largely associated with so-called the Anticipatory Theory.

From a very young age, the girls are interested in cuddling the baby dolls, often displaying the representative role of a mother and her nurturing fondness. The boys, on the other hand, are inclined towards wearing a military uniform and playing with gun toys, lifting the weights – and these days, those typical WWE stunts or NyaGoe actions – or jumping over a hill, mostly involving a muscular capacity. Basically in almost all ways, ‘the boys form hierarchies, wrestling, play-fighting and electing leaders, which are hardwired male brain’ (Allan & Pease, 2010).  

Such acts, in reality, depict how the child anticipates its future based on its gender. As parents, it is vital to understand their form of play with the kind of toys they interact with, as it not only derives them fun and amusement but also hints at the kind of future they would take interest in later in life.

“Men are self-confident because they grow up identifying with super-heroes. Women have bad self-images because they grow identifying with Barbie”- Rita Rudner