I read this post on font rendering. Summary: It's hard. It's at the whim of the browser/OS combination, and you can design it as best you'd like, but there's little chance of the actual product looking just like the designs.
They had some interesting examples showing how font size, color, contrast, etc. all impact how the text is rendered. These are the kinds of details that I'll now be noticing on a bunch of websites. Well done, article.
It was especially interesting to see how horrible fonts rendered with slight rotation looked when re-straightened. It got me thinking if the real bias in why these fonts were displayed worse was just a bias based on the grid-layout of pixels. Obviously, displays of higher density tended to not show poor text rendering effects, but could a differently shaped pixel help contribute to non-linear rendering at the same pixel density?
Yes, I got all technobabbly on you.
I wonder if you could make a screen out of hexagonal pixels. It would probably require special drivers to run, since I'm pretty sure all graphics are based on a rigid rectangular grid system. But technological issues aside, a hexagonal grid of pixels should let you render tilted text & curved lines with even more clarity than a grid based layout. Vertical lines might appear a bit odd, but maybe it would just be high enough resolution for it to work out?
Just an idea. I call 'em Hexels. Now somebody go build it.
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