The typeface is named after legibility researcher Richard Lionel Pyke, the author of 'Report on the Legibility of Print', published by the British Medical Research Council in 1926. PykeText and Micro are both inspired by Giambattista Bodoni’s earlier work having elements of the Transitional typeface tradition.

PykeText is developed for running text at regular text sizes of 9-14 points.
To improve readability and minimize the vertical feeling, the ascending lowercase stems of PykeText and Micro are bent slightly forward, the Didone style high contrast and radical transition between horizontal and vertical counters have been toned down, and the lowercase letters ‘e’ and ‘c’ have a diagonal axis.

Historical traditions dictate the Didone style narrow characters to be extra narrow. Nonetheless, to enhance the horizontal flow this tradition was disregarded in the text versions of Pyke; instead, emphasis was given to the forward movement by broadening and opening the loops in both characters ‘j’ and ‘f’. Another disregarded Didone style feature in PykeText and Micro is the heavy teardrops on the letters ‘f’, ‘j’, ‘a’, ‘c’ and ‘r’, which seem to enhance the vertical movement in the letters.

An early version of PykeText was subjected to experimental legibility investigations of distance and time threshold methods. Participants were exposed to different variations of the most frequently misread lowercase letters within the typeface. The findings demonstrated that the Italic style descending ‘f’ is more visible at distance than the Roman style ‘f’, that a closed aperture of the ‘e’ lowers visibility in a short exposure, and that the same goes for the closed aperture of the ‘c’ at distance.

The typeface PykeText
Available from the type foundry T26 >