What's in a Typeface?

Typefaces (or fonts, as they are more commonly known) are an important but often neglected part of visual design.  Each typeface brings something different to the table, since every typeface has its own distinct personality and degrees of readability ("how easily a line of text can be read") and legibility ("letter recognition") (Yoshida 2).

(For the sake of being technically correct, I should clarify that a "typeface" is “a particular style of type design including the full range of characters, in all sizes," while a "font" is "a specific variation of a
typeface in a specific point size" (Yoshida 1).)

In selecting a font to examine in more depth, I decided to go off the beaten path (as I often do) and look at Matisse ITC, a font that comes standard on most systems but is not often seen. 

Matisse is based on a typeface created by designer Gregory Gray, who worked on a special Matisse-focused issue of Madame Figaro, a supplement to Paris's Figaro newspaper.  Using an X-Acto knife, he cut the letters out of paper and scanned them into a computer (source: the "About This Font" tab on this page).

I'm going to outline my analysis of Matisse according to the three traits I mentioned earlier: legibility, readability, and personality, as Kathleen Burke Yoshida did in her article "Avoiding Typeface Terrors."  Since these characteristics, particularly personality, are subjective, I will provide some rationalization for my judgments.

Here is what the typeface looks like (18pt.) in Microsoft Word:

(do you like it?)

Legibility:
Yoshida advocates the use of a simple test to determine legibility: you cover either the top half or the bottom half of a line of text and see if you can still read it.  Try it with the text provided below, which is taken from Yoshida's article.  Click on the picture of the text to expand it to its full size, and use a piece of opaque paper to cover either half of the letters.  Again, the text is written Microsoft Word in Matisse 18pt.

How did you do?
Me, I didn't do so well.  When I covered the bottom half of the letters, the r's, d's, and p's looked alike, and it was difficult to tell the difference between e's and f's.  It was also hard to make out the n's.
I had an even harder time when I covered the top half of the letters.  Since many of the letter bottoms consist of very similar sharp points and angles, the letters are hard to distinguish when their top halves are covered.  For example, o's look like n's, which would probably also look like v's even though there aren't any v's in the text above.
So Matisse gets low scores on legibility. 

Readability:
Matisse is probably not the most readable typeface out there.  While it does have a tall x-height, the letters are narrow, and the default letter-spacing (or tracking) settings on Microsoft Word make the letters appear very close together.  Also, upper- and lower-case letters are not easily distinguishable in this typeface, which may make lines of certain texts difficult to read.
As in any other typeface, increasing the point size of Matisse increases its readability, as the picture below illustrates.

(Matisse in different point sizes.  Source: the Waterfall feature on Fonts.com)

Personality:
The variations in stroke weight, from very narrow to very heavy, give the typeface a very human, organic feel.  The letter elements look as if they could be carved or created by applying different levels of pressure to a brush.  Since most of the letter elements are created with heavier stroke weights, one could say that Matisse is a rather "loud" or "bold" typeface," and whimsical touches, like the dotted capital I and wide angles in the lower-case m and n, give it a "funky" and distinctive flair.  Like most other sans serif typefaces, Matisse is on the casual end of the spectrum, but it takes the casualness to another level with its lack of uniform sizes of ascenders, descenders, and other letter elements across the typeface.

My conclusion?  Matisse is really fun and distinctive typeface, but it would be reserved for headlines or really short blocks of text that you want to stand out.  It can also be used to provide initial caps, as suggested by Gregory Gray, himself (see the "About This Font" tab on this page).

What are your thoughts?  Do you have any experience using Matisee?