Consolas

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Consolas belongs to a font family completely separate to those that most graphic designers are used to, such as the generic serif/sans serif types. This is called a ‘monospaced’ or non-proportional typeface, which means that each letter is of exactly the same width and height, and each space between the letters when written as text is also exactly the same. This is the main factor that separates fonts such as Consolas from traditional serif/sans serif typefaces, as those often have varying widths and heights of letters, as well as spaces between each letter. This gives Consolas a very uniform look when used as a block of text, and somewhat discreet when used as a label or a heading.

This font was made to mimic traditional typewriter style lettering. Typewriters then did not have the capacity to produce varying letter widths and heights, nor did they have the option for wider or narrower kerning. In effect, the text written on a typewriter would look much like this.

Consolas was traditionally used by computer programmers to write programming code, due to its uniformity and legibility on the screen. The even spacing made it easy for them to read, where something less even would leave more opportunity for mistakes in the code. Consolas was developed for Windows and Microsoft users, namely Windows 7, Windows Vista, Microsoft Office 2007, and Microsoft Visual Studio 2010. This font is part of a new font family that makes use of Microsoft’s ClearType font rendering technology, which is something that enables enlargement of the letters without aliasing (Wikipedia). Visually, Consolas is quite similar to Courier or Courier New, Lucida Console, and Monaco from the Mac operating system.

Consolas was developed by Lucas de Groot as a replacement font for Courier and Courier New. He claimed that those typefaces were inadequate for use by programmers, as they were too thin, and became easily aliased on a screen interface (Chaparro, Shaikh, Merkle, 2010).

It could be said that Consolas is merely an improvement of the original font Courier, which has its own history, and even symbolic and conceptual connotations. However Consolas is not clear of these connotations as it is, at face value, a very similar font. Courier, as well as being used for programming before the introduction of Consolas, was often used in the film industry, for script writing. The monospaced text in 12 point was used as a standard, or code, where one page translated to approximately one minute of time on the screen. On a more serious note, Courier was also used in official government documents, thus giving it a secretive stigma (Prepressure, 2010).

The varying uses of the monospaced typeface give it somewhat of a contradictory meaning, where on one hand, it is seen as vintage and nostalgic, yet on the other hand, it is viewed as progressive, and indicative of a digital age.

References

2010, ‘Courier’, Prepressure, accessed 5th March 2011, .

2011, ‘Consolas’, Wikipedia, accessed 5th March 2011, .

Chaparro, B. S. Shaikh, A. D. Chaparro A. Merkle E. C., 2010,
‘Comparing the legibility of six ClearType typefaces to Verdana and Times New Roman’, Information Design Journal 18(1), pp.36-49.