Reading without reading

<p>Mass-Driver just released <a href="https://mass-driver.com/typefaces/md-ui/">MD UI</a>, a neo-grotesque type family that’s been designed to compliment Rutherford Craze and Co.’s already <a href="https://mass-driver.com/typefaces/md-io/">excellent mono-space</a>. And just as the name implies, MD UI is designed for <a href="https://mass-driver.com/article/md-ui-a-typeface-for-interfacing">a different kind of reading</a>:</p> <blockquote> <p>When we think about reading, we tend to picture books, or magazines, or business reports. Blocks of text, traversed from beginning to end. There’s another kind of reading, though, one which I think we do much more often without really noticing it.</p> <p>It’s a kind of instantaneous scanning of a word or two at a time: the hour on a smartwatch, or the label on microwave dial, or the URL in your web browser. I like to call this interfacing, because it’s less about digesting information (or experiencing the text) than about interacting with your immediate surroundings. You don’t think of it as reading at all — it just happens.</p> </blockquote> <p><em>Interfacing</em> is a great word! I realize now just how limiting it is to describe all types of reading as simply <em>reading</em>, as if all flowers are <em>flowers</em> or all birds are <em>birds</em>. The world is more complicated! There is nuance here! And of course the way we process information is more complex than a single word can hope to describe.</p> <p>Also, I appreciate the confidence from Mass-Driver in this new type release. There’s a self-assuredness (without ego!) that can be found in the design notes that I truly admire:</p> <blockquote> <p>MD UI isn’t so much a revival of the International Style as an anticipation of its potential future. It’s an attempt to take the familiar and push it just one step further; to fix a couple of the annoyances while leaving what works alone. That’s easier said than done. But it’s done.</p> </blockquote>