Certain fonts can improve your reading speed, researchers find
Plus: Amy Sherald is heading to Europe with an exhibition reimagining Western icons
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Certain fonts can improve your reading speed, researchers find
Amy Sherald is heading to Europe with an exhibition reimagining Western icons
Halsey is auctioning off art she made live on tour to benefit abortion access
Certain fonts can improve your reading speed, researchers find
If you want to read faster, try a different font.
Reading speed can be improved by as much as 35% when readers go from the slowest fonts to the fastest, according to a study published in the August 2022 issue of Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction.
Of the 16 fonts researchers used, EB Garamond and Montserrat were faster on average (particularly among readers 35 and older) and Avant Garde and Open Sans were slower on average, but — and this is a big but — the study found no one font was faster for every reader.
The high words-per-minute variability across fonts suggests one font does not fit all, researchers from Adobe, Brown University, and the University of Central Florida wrote.
If you think you know what font is best for you, think again. Researchers found a reader’s preference for a font had nothing to do with how effective it was and no single factor can predict reading speed.
“People do not know what is good for them in terms of font choice for reading,” they wrote.
Since matching readers to their fastest fonts is time consuming and there aren’t currently any models to help figure out which fonts are best, researchers hope future studies with more participants could shed light on what’s most effective for different readers.
The application for font personalization could be huge for educators and communicators. Imagine a classroom where every student can read in the font that’s best for them.
“We spend more time on our screens now than ever before, trying to consume a rapidly growing amount of information through digital devices. Reading quickly and comprehending this ever-growing body of information is integral to work, leisure, social interaction, and personal advancement,” researchers wrote. “We posit that customizing reading experiences with font choice can lead to significant real-world improvements in digital tools and applications.”
Amy Sherald is heading to Europe with an exhibition reimagining Western icons
Hauser & Wirth London announced it will host artist Amy Sherald’s first European exhibition The World We Make later this year, and the show will reportedly feature Sherald’s takes on some iconic images.
Only one new piece from the show has been so far released, of a woman posing in a sweater and blue pants (above), but according to the Art Newspaper, some of the other paintings are more stylised and dramatic than Sherald’s past work.
She reinterprets “Napoleon Crossing the Alps” (1801) by Jacques-Louis David to show instead a man on a motorcycle (side note: fellow Obama portraitist Kehinde Wiley did his own take in 2005 with “Napoleon Leading the Army over the Alps”).
Another painting, “For love, and for country,” reimagines the famous photo of a soldier and nurse kissing on V-J Day in Times Square as two Black men.
“I was thinking about the history behind the photograph and the Black soldiers who returned from the war shortly after, and what it would mean to broach the iconic pose through another understanding of masculinity," Sherald told the Art Newspaper. "I consider the painting a furtherance of my interest in American culture and an expression of those stories once left out from the dominant historical narratives.”
Not everything in the show will pay homage, however. Hauser & Wirth said the exhibition “humanizes the Black experience” and “foregrounds the idea that Black life and identity are not solely tethered to grappling publicly with social issues.”
The exhibition will run from Oct. 12 to Dec. 23, 2022 and include Sherald’s first major monograph with a conversation between her and author Ta-Nehisi Coates.
Halsey is auctioning off art made live on tour to benefit abortion access
Halsey is auctioning off five onstage paintings made during her ongoing Love and Power Tour to raise money for the National Network of Abortion Funds.
Created in less than three minutes during performances of her 2020 song “Be Kind,” each is made with paint marker on canvas. The works come from her tour stops in Nashville, Detroit, Boston, Portland, and Gulf Shores, Ala., and they’re being auctioned by Sotheby’s, which expects each to net between $5,000 to $7,000.
Halsey told Sotheby’s that visual art is her favorite artistic medium and it relates to her music and songwriting because “they are both very stream of consciousness.”
“I do a lot of continuous line drawings, and in the same way that I write a song, it starts as one thought and unravels into a string of them,” Halsey said. “I write and draw about similarly dark themes. I write mostly about people and I mostly enjoy drawing people.”
Halsey has been outspoken about her thoughts on abortion since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling. She wrote in an editorial earlier this month in Vogue that she had an abortion following a miscarriage before giving birth last year to her son Ender.
“Many people have asked me if, since carrying a child to term after years of struggling to do so, I have reconsidered my stance on abortion. The answer is firmly no,” Halsey wrote. “In fact, I have never felt more strongly about it. My abortion saved my life and gave way for my son to have his. Every person deserves the right to choose when, if, and how they have this dangerous and life-altering experience. I will hold my son in one arm, and fight with all my might with the other.”
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