Joints/Intersections

The thinning of strokes at joints is a regular practice in type design, to visually compensate for heavy spots at the junctions.

In XR headsets the excessive glow of pixels (irradiation) distorts the shape of the character which becomes a cause of worry as it hampers legibility.

Monolinear typefaces with very low stroke modulation suffer from distortion and excess glow at the joints.

While selecting the typefaces, do extensive testing on the headsets and observe the joints.

• Check if the strokes become thinner at the joints (observe bare eyes).

• See if they appear heavy at the junctions (on headsets).

• Observe the change in the shape of the letters (on headsets).

Look for typefaces that compensate for heaviness in joints via stroke modulation or ink-traps (in our scenario light traps, a corresponding term used by me to address the need for XR headsets).