Responsive Type - Introducing Self-Adjusting Graphic Characters

In this publication we introduced a radical new concept of perceiving information in written form: Until today, after the layout process has finished, the shape of a single typographic character is treated as an unchangeable property. But due to current sensor and display technologies this does not have to be necessary anymore. We propose, to change the shape of each character according to various conditions of the user while maintaining its individual and discriminative identity. In contrast to fixed character shapes, responsive character shapes are not limited to be adjusted for a particular output media, but offers the possibilities to adjust to personal conditions such as age, position and defects of sight. This seemingly simple difference, however, questions information brokering fundamentally. It expands the possibilities, besides the engagement of the media, to perceive information within the context and the conditions of the individual. Through experiments and user studies, we demonstrated that our proposed approach, dubbed responsive type, is widely accepted and readability as well as legibility can be improved.