Comment by dredmorbius
3 years ago
Lower-dpi screens, including the traditional ~96 dpi of classic monitors, makes serif-fonts less clear.
High-definition screens (such as the iMac retina display I'm looking at presently) and many e-ink devices hit 200+ dpi (200--300 is not uncommon for e-ink), which is the starting point for many laserprinters, though those can go to 600--1200 dpi. Monchrome vs. colour will show some distinction in clarity (monochrome effectively has about 3x greater resolution in displays given three-colour picture elements (pels).
My own experience is that I much prefer serif to sans-serif fonts for any substantial reading, though labels and titles may read better in a sans font.
State's decision here seems quite flawed.
The thought does occur:
Given that Calibri is Microsoft Office's default font ...
... and that Mobile has vastly overtaken Desktop in number of devices (by roughly an order of magnitude) ...
... then it may well be that both Microsoft and the State Department are optimising for reading on mobile. Which could be defensible, I suppose.
Though a far better practice would be to adopt a flexible document standard (say, ePub or HTML, though they're of course not unrelated), which will then adapt to appropriate media characterstics and, say, display in a sans font on small mobile devices and serif in print or large, high-def devices and displays.
(Note that "large" and "high definition" are not necessarily identical: a projection display is large but often not especially high definition. Likewise public signage and the like.)
Edit: As this 2012 NNGroup (Jakob Nielsen) suggests: in "Serif vs. Sans-Serif Fonts for HD Screens". Though the piece notes that with high-definition displays of 200 dpi and above reasons to avoid serif-based fonts are mooted, there's still no clear argument for them either:
Almost all mainstream printed newspapers, magazines, and books use serif type, and thus people are more accustomed to reading long texts in this style. However, given the research data, the difference in reading speed between serif and sans serif is apparently quite small. Thus, there's no strong usability guideline in favor of using one or the other, so you can make the choice based on other considerations — such as branding or the mood communicated by a particular typographical style.
<https://www.nngroup.com/articles/serif-vs-sans-serif-fonts-h...>
(I note that as a strong fan of serif-based fonts for long-form works myself.)