The Math Behind Wired's New Logo
When the February issue of Wired Magazine debuted with a new logo, we explained inside the magazine that it “obeys the Law of Optical Volumes.” We were being coy –many readers went scurrying to Wikipedia and Google to investigate this curious law, only to find … nothing.
Here’s the skinny: The Law of Optical Volumes is Wired creative director Scott Dadich’s term for a typography rule that governs the spacing of characters within a font. The theory behind it has been evident on newsstands for years now, thanks in part to typography guru Jonathan Hoefler, whose firm Hoefler & Frere-Jones designed Wired’s new typefaces used throughout the magazine. You can also see Hoefler’s work at typography.com – or in The Wall Street Journal, Esquire and Martha Stewart Living.
And here’s a definition: The Law of Optical Volumes states that the area between any two letters in a word must be of equal measure throughout the word, and remain consistent throughout the body of text.
(…)
The same goes for Wired’s new logo. It alternates between letters without and with serifs, yet the area between each pair of letters is about the same, thanks to the serifs on the I and E and lack thereof on the W, R and D. This equivalence makes the logo easier to see and read across a crowded supermarket aisle. The alternating fonts also make the letters seem to blink on and off as you read them from left to right, in emulation of digital ones and zeroes.
Wired_logo
Unfortunately this advanced, scientific approach to font layout is still only available in ink on paper. Web fonts in 2007 still don’t have kerning pairs. We don’t know why. To see and appreciate the Law in action beyond our logo, you’ll need to pick up a copy of the magazine.
(…)
Read more:
The Underwire (Wired Blog)
