The Ails Of Typographic Anti-Aliasing

Tom Giannattasio

As printed typography enjoys the fruits of high-DPI glory, proudly
displaying its beautiful curves and subtleties, its on-screen counterpart
remains stifled by bulky pixels, living in a world of jagged edges, distorted
letterforms and trimmed serifs. Until display manufacturers produce
affordable 200 or 300 PPI monitors, we՚ll have to rely on software advances
to fix these problems.

Enter anti-aliasing: the next best thing to a world of higher-resolution
monitors. The concept of anti-aliasing is fairly simple: add semi-transparent
pixels along the edges of letterforms to smooth the appearance of the
“stair-step” effect.