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A curious and unexpected thing has happened to personal computing typography: it's gotten cheaper and much more interesting, thanks to TrueType, a new digital typography standard that nobody (including the author) took seriously when it was first proposed. The author evaluates eight TrueType type collections costing from 10 cents to $1.25 per typeface. This article discusses that evaluation, and also evaluates a $19 CD‐ROM with more than 400 typefaces. The results may surprise you. They certainly surprised the author, when a company perhaps best known for selling cheap software in Canadian convenience stores proved to have not only the cheapest (per typeface) but also the best all‐around inexpensive typeface collection. The author also provides notes on the literature for April‐June 1993, including the last issues of PC Sources.

Words on paper: that's the end result of most personal computing, at least in library related fields. The author revisits a topic covered extensively in his earlier articles, but takes on a very different aspect this time around: typographic options for word processing. Content may be the crucial objective of written communication, but good typography can't hurt and frequently helps, while bad typography can get in the way of communication. The author notes some major options for desktop typography, discusses some of the issues involved in making the choices, and reviews Swfte Glyphix, a lesser‐known system for generating any size typeface, as needed, while using Microsoft Word or WordPerfect. January‐March 1990 brought more of the same in PC magazines; the most interesting new development for library PC users might be the introduction of the Hewlett‐Packard LaserJet III, which has been used to “typeset” this issue of Library Hi Tech.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) marketing has become ubiquitous in the hospitality industry. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effectiveness of donation appeals containing warmth-focused versus competence-focused messages in hospitality CSR marketing. Moreover, we offer an innovative visual design strategy focusing on the typeface (handwritten vs machine-written) in donation appeals to encourage consumers’ donations and boost their brand loyalty.

This research used a 2 (message framing: warmth-focused vs competence-focused) × 2 (typeface: handwritten vs machine-written) between-subjects experimental design.

The findings suggest that donation appeals featuring warmth-focused messages combined with handwritten typeface and competence-focused messages combined with machine-written typeface can maximize donation intention and brand loyalty. Furthermore, results from the moderated mediation analyses indicate that brand trust is the psychological mechanism underlying these effects.

Hospitality managers should use typeface design, which is easy and inexpensive to manipulate, to enhance the effectiveness of CSR marketing. Specifically, for donation appeals featuring warmth-focused (competence-focused) messages, the handwritten (machine-written) typeface can boost consumers’ donation intention and brand loyalty.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is the first to reveal the competitive advantage of typeface design in hospitality CSR marketing. This research sheds light on the congruency effects of message framing and typeface design in donation appeals on consumers’ donation intention and brand loyalty while using the contemporary context of The Coronavirus Disease 2019 to test the theory.

This paper aims to explore whether products branded with handwritten scripts suffer more from the effects of product-harm crises than other brands. Most studies on handwritten scripts focus on their positive effects, such as humanizing a product or creating an emotional tie with consumers. However, seldom have researchers investigated the negative effects of handwritten scripts. This paper goes some way to filling this gap.

Five experimental studies were conducted to test three hypotheses. These experiments provide evidence of the negative effects of handwritten scripts. In addition, they reveal the mechanisms that lead to these outcomes and outline the boundary conditions of the negative effects.

Framed by attribution theory, three conclusions can be drawn from the experiments: when a product-harm crisis occurs, consumers react with greater negativity toward the brand using handwritten scripts than to those using machine typefaces. The negative effect is explained by a serial mediation process that follows the pattern: typeface → perceived humanization → brand responsibility → brand attitude. The negative effect decreases when the crisis is perceived to be an accident.

This paper enriches the theory of marketing in terms of both handwritten scripts and product-harm crises, providing valuable guidance for enterprises that use handwritten scripts in their marketing activities.

If confession is good for the soul, this is Crawford's personal revival meeting. Yes, the hardcore text maven and trailing‐edge devotee has gone GUI: most of his home computing now uses a true graphical user interface. The author says that the taste of crow has passed and that the new environment works very well, albeit not without a few frustrations. This article discusses the author's move to Windows and some of the good and bad points of that interface. The author includes some tips on Windows, as seems inevitable for any article on that topic. The author also provides some additional notes related to previous columns, on clip‐art collections and the actual construction of TrueType typefaces. As usual, the article concludes with notes on the recent PC literature.

Recent Trailing Edge articles have discussed typefaces and graphics. This column discusses putting it all together: economical desktop publishing. There has never been a better time for libraries to become desktop publishers, and some will find that doing so requires no new software or hardware. The author discusses changes that have made desktop publishing such an appealing and reasonably‐priced proposition in 1994 and some of your options for getting started and moving on. He brings the typeface discussion up to date with a startling recent development and defines the difference between true desktop publishing and the spare‐no‐expense field that the “desktop publishing” magazines cover. A sidebar notes a series of desktop publishing workshops that the author is offering as part of LITA's regional institutes program. Finally, the author adds notes on the personal computing literature for January to March 1994, now including some Macintosh magazines and, soon, CD‐ROM/multimedia publications.

DURING the past decade we have witnessed a remarkable improvement in the typography of books, although in large part this has been confined to the design of typefaces rather than to the design of the books themselves. “Cold type” has undoubtedly become far more legible and far more aesthetic than it had been for many years. Correct use of type by the printer is, however, as important as its manufacture; hence the benefits we should derive from the improvement vary from book to book according to the degree of craftsmanship of the printers.

Restaurants’ outdoor signage plays an irreplaceable role in attracting potential diners, as it conveys important functional and symbolic meanings of the businesses. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of typographic design elements of outdoor signage on consumers’ perceptions of authenticity. This study also tests the linkage between authenticity and willingness to dine, as well as the moderating effect of frequency of dining in ethnic restaurants on the relationship.

Using a 2 (simplified vs traditional Chinese characters) × 2 (calligraphy vs computer font) × 2 (vertical vs horizontal text flow) between-subject design, the authors did two experiments with 786 Chinese diners. Restaurant authenticity and willingness to dine are dependent variables, and openness to ethnic cuisine is the control variable.

Display characters and text flow significantly affect restaurant authenticity. Furthermore, the results of this study demonstrate that display characters interact with typeface to influence restaurant authenticity. Consumers’ perceived authenticity significantly increases their willingness to dine. The frequency of dining in ethnic restaurants moderates the relationship between restaurant authenticity and willingness to dine.

Ethnic restaurateurs should pay attention to the outdoor signage design, as it affects potential consumers’ authenticity perceptions. Specifically, in Mainland China, traditional Chinese characters and vertical text direction increase potential consumers’ authenticity perceptions.

This study extends the semiotic theory and applies the cue–judgment–behavior model in the hospitality literature. This study also provides new understanding of authenticity by identifying the influence of typographic design on authenticity, which confirms the semiotic theory that certain semiotic cues affect consumers’ judgments.

In the past, legibility research has been mainly concerned with the conventionally typeset and printed word. ‘Printed’ materials are now produced by a variety of other methods, however, and other media such as microforms and cathode ray tubes (CRTs) are commonly used for information display. The effects of these new methods and media on legibility are often given scant consideration, but because of their visual limitations, it is all the more important that the legibility and ease of use of the information should be taken into account. The scope of legibility research must therefore be extended to cover the products of modern information technology. The aim of this paper is to summarize some of the research which has already been carried out and which is of relevance to present‐day problems, and to suggest where further research is most needed.