Typeface solution provider Monotype has become a founding member of the Clear Information Presentation Consortium (Clear-IP), a consortium created by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) AgeLab which boasts Google as its first full member.

Clear-IP aims to drive research that investigates the legibility and design questions relating to reading in brief glances. It is the evolution of Monotype’s and MIT’s research collaboration, which began in 2012, looking at quick glance environments.

“The glance is the new currency of the age and we need to know how to design for it,” said Nadine Chahine PhD, type director and legibility expert at Monotype and member of the Clear-IP board of directors. “The one thing that we keep finding out again and again is that legibility is relative and it depends on many factors that often interact with one another whether it is typeface style, size, weight, colour, polarity or even ambient light. When it comes to the design of interfaces for reading in quick glances, we need to know how to balance all of these factors in order to present clear information to the reader.”

Clear-IP says that it aims ‘to bring together a wide variety of stakeholders with common interests in having empirical data to guide decisions on typography and design’.

“Through our work with Monotype, we’ve found that certain type styles have an impact on how fast people can read information under specific conditions. However, this work is only the beginning in learning how type, design, technology, environmental and human factors play into glance-based reading,” added Bryan Reimer PhD, research scientist at MIT AgeLab and member of the Clear-IP board of directors. “With Clear-IP, we now have an organization dedicated to isolating and understanding the trade-offs surrounding the questions of modern typographic design and information presentation.

“Our hope with Clear-IP is that we can pool the resources of diverse stakeholders to learn more about how those rules operate, and how they can be optimized for modern applications and use cases.”