[type design] Microsoft's New Six

According to this article on poynter.org, MSFT plans on shipping six new fonts with its OSs beginning in 2006.

These are notable because, coming from an assumption that more and more content is being read on video display devices such as cell phones, laptop screens, and computer screens, the fonts are designed to this practicality.

There are the sans-serif Calibri, Candara, and Cordel; the serif Cambria and Constantia: and the monospaced Consola. The article itself is instructive because it acknowledges and illustrates some of the considerations designers go over when using and designing with type.

Over my typographic education, my instructors have shown something which I have (and, indeed, most of us) on a gut level understood for quite a long time. Type is more than merely figures and shapes on a page or on a screen. They carry weight, character, and atmosphere. You expect a certain sort of look from type on a contract, which is different than the look you'd expect from type used in a comic strip or even on a promotional poster. Picture a home mortgate document with Comic Sans MS (which has other sins, but that's for another post) even as only the headings to the sections, and you'll get an idea of what I mean here.

Moreover, there is a question of readability. The harder you have to work to read something, the less likely you will be to want to. Looking at something takes energy (what is one of the things we do when we are tired? Close our eyes momentarily) and the harder one has to work to read something the more unpleasant it will be. The designers answer to this is to obsess and design the small parts of the letter, the curves, the way the strokes flare (which also imparts a character), the size and aspect of the serifs. And this feeds back into the overall shape and character of the font. If done well, it's something that gives a solid feel.

Anyway, read the article. I want those fonts; they're good ones, and the comments say why.