B612: the PolarSys font Laurent SPAGGIARI, AIRBUS Laurent SPAGGIARI, Nicolas CHAUVEAU, Jean-Luc VINOT Eclipsecon France 2017, Toulouse, France

1 2 3 4 5 6 Agenda Why a new font Prototyping Design tests Industrialization 5 Validation tests 6 Product & Next steps

Why a new font 1 Main font used And other fonts used: Verdana, Blériot Airbus, Arial, Courier new

Why a new font 1 Different needs to be covered: Homogeneity Enhanced legibility (easiness of identification and discrimination of a character or a series) Comfort Safety (protection against error) Different constraints to take into account Distance, orientation, light, vibrations, color, …) Specific textual data (codes, abbreviations, etc.) Define criteria for font usability

Studies 1 One academic study on reading (by fixation and saccades, central vs. peripheral vision) and how it is affected by: Distance/orientation/position to screen Lighting conditions Screen (size, type, resolution, …) Font characters size and forms Contrast, color, spacing, … Fatigue, vibrations, … One technical study on the needs and the technical constraints: Current fonts used in Airbus cockpits (tech. analysis) Operational needs and real usage of textual information (observations in sim, during commercial flights and discussions with pilot crews) One study on the assessment techniques and typographic solutions: Experiments and algorithms Discussions with digital font specialist (école Estienne/Imprimerie Nationale) Transform criteria for font usability into recommendations for font design

Recommendations for the design 1 28 Recommendations for the design of the B612 font On the font and the sets of characters (10 rules) On the drawing of characters (11 rules) On the management of spacing (7 rules) R.1.1 The visual height (angle of vision) of the characters displayed must ensure a good readability of the text. This angle must not be smaller than 15 minutes of arc. R.2.1 The glyphs (results of the digital font) must be easily visually identified and discriminated in context (refer to need analysis report) R.3.1 A proportional alignment of the font is necessary to ensure a good letter shaping and the coherence of spacing. Monospacing is preferable for numbers. Prototype a font

Prototyping 2 Exploration of technical and typographical solutions to answer the criteria (legibility, comfort, robustness, …) Maximize the distance between the forms of the characters Respect the primitives of the different letters Harmonize the forms and their spacing Half bitting CDS Bleriot Verdana Gaussian blur => Strengthening of angles/curves Composition and alignment

Prototyping 2 Paper sketch Vector translation Digitalization Set of glyphs for design test Test the prototype

Calibration of the contrast Tests 3 Calibration of the contrast (Landolt rings) Good answer No answer Wrong answer => No impact of contact lens, spectacles, lighting conditions, etc. 3 fonts CDS, Verdana, New 2 distances (80cm, 100 cm) appearance time 17ms Confusion matrix

Tests 3 Same trend => tests in lab valid: go for quick design loops Lab: appearance time 17ms Sim: appearance time 40ms Same trend Good answer No answer Wrong answer => tests in lab valid: go for quick design loops V1 V2 V1 V2

Tests 3 Complementary lab tests Same trend Letter retrieval/counting pairings Same trend 3 thicknesses 3 polarities and 2 contrasts Once mature enough, industrialize the font

Industrialization 4 Discrimination Emphasis (variants) italic bold italic bold italic Spacing Identification with kerning regular

Industrialization 4 Optical corrections with hinting with antialiasing Validate the font and validation on sim with end-users

Validation tests 5 Same experiments as during previous steps New experiments (reading task and information retrieval on displays, pairings and questionnaires + discussion) + 8 Airbus pilots + other participants 2 lighting conditions (night + ¾ lum)

Validation tests 5 Questionnaire Pairing New CDS

Product 6 587 glyphs New font Punctuation & symbols monospace proportional italic bold Italic + bold regular 587 glyphs Punctuation & symbols Accents & ligatures Greek alphabet Roman numerals Subscripts & exponents Mathematics & measurement Arrows & directions General & specific pictograms

Product 6

Next steps 6 Next steps (2017?) Since 2013: Used by HMI designers in Airbus R&T (and in other entities) Next steps (2017?) “Hinting and kerning” to apply on special characters “Alpha instructions” to apply on all sizes New variants to develop (black, light, not condensed, etc.) Existing tables to complete (Latin extended A & B, etc.)

For those about to ask ‘Why B612?’ “I have serious reason to believe that the planet from which the little prince came is the asteroid known as B-612”. The Little Prince Antoine de Saint-Exupéry