Just because something is legible doesn't mean it communicates...
From all these experiences the most important thing I have learned is that legibility and beauty stand close together and that type design, in its restraint, should be only felt but not perceived by the reader.
Never mistake legibility for communication.
Legibility, in practice, amounts simply to what one is accustomed to.
The trace left behind is substituted for the practice. It exhibits the (voracious) property that the geographical system has of being able to transform action into legibility, but in doing so it causes a way of being in the world to be forgotten.
Don't confuse legibility with communication.
Sometimes you sacrifice legibility to increase impact.
Legibility, in practice, amounts simply to what one is accustomed to. But this is not to say that because we have got used to something demonstrably less legible than something else would be if we could get used to it, we should make no effort to scrap the existing thing. This was done by the Florentines and Romans of the fifteenth century; it requires simply good sense in the originators & good will in the rest of us.
Digital ink technology holds substantial promise in terms of legibility, portability, and power consumption, but I am less confident about the communication aspect.
I believe sans serif typefaces - today upheld as models of neutrality and legibility - were called "Grotesques" in the 19th century because people thought they were hideous. But now we're used to them.
The studies I've seen about readability and legibility tend to focus on a specific set of metrics: size, not just the point size, but things like the size of the lower case letters as a proportion of the overall letter height, and line length. People simply can't read really small type set in really long lines.
What's the use of being legible, when nothing inspires you to take notice of it?
Dont confuse legibility with communication. Just because something is legible doesnt mean it communicates and, more importantly, doesnt mean it communicates the right thing.
or simply:
