The basic interior of the automobile changed little in the latter half of the 20th century. “You had the steering wheel, the gas pedal, the brakes. And the display in there might have been providing a digital readout of the radio station,” says Bryan Reimer, a research scientist at the MIT AgeLab. In the last decade, though, those displays have grown so sophisticated--or, rather, distracting--that even the typefaces used in them could impact how you drive, the lab’s latest study suggests.
The study, conducted in partnership with the global typeface design company Monotype Imaging , found that small changes in the typeface design of in-car text could have actual consequences on the road. “From our perspective, we’re absolutely not promoting more text in the car," says David Gould, Monotype’s director of product marketing. “But whatever text is there should be as optimal as possible.”