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Ugraphia: The Pursuit of Perfect Legibility Vlad Atanasiu  Is perfect legibility, Ugraphia, possible outside of Thomas More’s Utopia? Understanding the limits of legibility is of practical relevance to typeface design and optometry, in addition to being of theoretical interest for research in human communication. Drawing on a wide range of material from paleography, typography, psychology, information theory, and cinema, and supplemented with an original experiment in script design, its argument reflected in idiosyncratically writing and layout styles, this cross-cultural history of legibility explores an interlocking complex of factors affecting progress in the long-term evolution of legibility. Ugraphia reveals the divergence between industrial ideals, scientific theories, and popular representations of legibility, how power games are played and aesthetic fashions develop through scripts. Already loaded with heritage, scripts are being concomitantly constrained by character frequency variation between languages, visual perceptual effects, the kinematics of handwriting production, and the evolution of imaging, print and display technologies. There is limited progress found with respect to character structure, and a persistent flow and ebb in the legibility of handwriting (‘bioscript’); however, there is ample optimization of artificially produced writing (‘mechascript’), as well as a potential improvement in reading performance due to script proliferation and diversification. DOI: https://doi.org/10.36824/2025-atanasiu Table of contents References How to cite How to cite in BIB Table of contents — 1901 Aims of book: investigate if perfect legibility is possible — 1908 Rhetoric: a scientific, literary, & graphic catalog of legibility constraints, illustrated with pictures, quotes, & typefaces, ranging from psychological to typographic to sociocultural to cinematic — 1909 Frame. Epistemological perspectives & concept definitions — 1912 Empirics. It is difficult to recognize the perfectly legible script when it is unclear how to measure legibility — 1915 Ideals. The present typographical ideal of legibility is invisibility: script should not distract from reading — 1917 Opinions on legibility — 1918 Theories. Legibility is impermanent: subjective & contextual, fluctuating with social & material conditions — 1938 Consequences. Does perfect legibility make us think differently? — 1943 Mythology. Genesis, treatment, & ultima ratio of illegibility — 1945 Legacy. Legibility is constrained by the legacy of character shapes — 1951 Overload. Legibility is constrained by non-visual factors: linguistic, economical, political, etc — 1952 Power. Legibility is the effectiveness of social control & command exerted by normative pattern production, while illegibility is a defense mechanism — 1959 Sausage. A diet of only one script, however perfect, will eventually make you sick — 1963 Set size. Plotting legibility against character set — 1965 Entropy. Shape distinctiveness increases legibility — 1966 Statistics. Differences in character frequency & combinatorics across languages, orthographies, & contents result in patterns of varying legibility — 1967 Gestalt. Contextual legibility optimization beyond local is difficult — 1968 Size. There is an optimal script size range for every user & application — 1971 Density. Legibility depends non-linearly on stroke density per character area — 1972 Gray. The textural pattern of paragraphscannot be influenced by script producers at content level — 1973 Contrast. Epigraphic shadows & color contrast between script & background affect legibility — 1975 Perception. Space perception is anisotropic, especially for dyslexics, one example among the many known & unknown perceptual phenomena affecting legibility — 1979 Phenomenology. Experience of a script’s persona impacts its legibility — 1980 Psychedelia. Getting high on legibility — 1983 Kinematics. Scripts are optimized for production facility, not solely visual appearance — 1984 Memory. Legibility is a matter of perfecting mnemonics — 1989 Synthesis. Mobiles, constraining factors, & attitudes are components of the legibility machinery — 2000 Evolution. Exposure to diverse scripts improves recognition performance — 2002 Acculturation. Syncretisms keep legibility in dynamic equilibrium — 2011 Materiality. Legibility varies with physical embodiment & environmental conditions — 2014 Aesthetics. Script attractiveness motivates legibility performance — 2014 Personalization. Legibility is optimal when tuned to a specific reader — 2018 Plasticity. The tolerance range for deciphering bad writing is wide enough that most will care little about legibility until bad eyesight & old age catch up with us — 2019 Script Acts: Effective Imperfection. What counts in written communication are outcomes, not character recognition alone, which may even benefit from imperfection — 2021 Poiesis. Creative ambiguity — 2028 Undesirability. There are instances in which less legibility is desirable — 2030 Spectrum. There are application-specific degrees & kinds of legibility — 2034 Evidence. Legibility improves at a micromorphological level in artificially produced scripts, while the evolutionary improvement of character structure & handwriting is uncertain — 2034 Polygraphy. Presence of multiple scripts in the same document decreases legibility — 2048 Layout. Layout ergonomy depends on information selection & manipulation ease — 2053 Time. Legibility is degraded by script decay over time — 2061 Representation. Cinema represents legibility as a feat & a mystery to be pried open — 2063 Experiment. Script design is a compromise between many variables, only one being legibility — 2074 Next steps in legibility optimization — 2078 Exit. Concluding remarks — 2079 References — 2088 Ontoindex — 2110 Fonts — 2128 Acknowledgments — 2130 Mail — 2134 Vlad Atanasiu, Ugraphia: The Pursuit of Perfect Legibility, Grapholinguistics and Its Applications, vol. 6, Brest: Fluxus Editions, 2025 @BOOK{gla6-atanasiu, AUTHOR = {Atanasiu, Vlad}, SERIES = {Grapholinguistics and Its Applications}, VOLUME = {6}, TITLE = {{(Ugraphia: The Pursuit of Perfect Legibility}}, PUBLISHER = {Fluxus Editions}, ADDRESS = {Brest}, YEAR = {2025}, DOI = {https://doi.org/10.36824/2025-atanasiu}, }