E Optical Illusion

[fahnestock]

This topic was imported from the Typophile platform

I don't know if it's just me and I've never heard of this optical illusion but do the arms of this E appear to flare into the stem?
I like my corrected version better but I want to get some other thoughts on it. Thanks.

[fahnestock]

Am I just crazy?

[Nick Cooke]

The one on the right looks wrong. I think it's your eyes. I have a similar thing with circles not appearing circular, but slightly super elliptical diamond shaped.

[Igor Freiberger]

Jack, I have the same impression. But prior to adopting a change, I suggest you to make print tests to see if this illusion persists. Screen bright may induct different impressions than prints.

[hrant]

If anything, the open end has to be thicker (generally).

hhp

[Joshua Langman]

I'm with Hrant on this one.

[Albert Jan Pool]

Me too!

[Thomas Phinney]

Ditto.

> I have a similar thing with circles not appearing circular, but slightly super elliptical diamond shaped.

You are not alone on that, it’s actually a common optical illusion. I mentioned it in the article I just wrote for Communication Arts....

[hrant]

Link?
And you wrote a piece like that last year, right?

hhp

[Thomas Phinney]

Article is in press, won’t be out until March, sorry!

[hrant]

Sure – just remind me to remind you. ;-)

hhp

[Thomas Phinney]

I'm sure you'll see me tweet and FB and such when the article is out. It's about how to tell well-crafted fonts from crap, which ends up being basically about all the tricks of human perception you have to compensate for in type design.

[Martin Silvertant]

Thomas, I would love to read that article as well when it's out.

I also agree the open ends have to be thicker generally, but which E looks better is contextual in my opinion. From a distance the left E looks better, and I suppose this is the best way to view the typeface. When I look up close though I see the left E features semi-transparent pixels to suggest a very slight slant whereas the right E features very sharp horizontal lines. I don't think this is an optical illusion which actually affects the shape of the letter though. I don't think it should be compensated for. Perhaps only if you're doing a really big geometric display letter.