Typography in the Eyes of Bertin, Gender and Expertise Variation

The main goal of this research is to set a group of typographic criteria to suit a wide array of map users. A group of Bertin’s visual variables were applied individually and associatively for the same set of labels. Two kinds of maps (with point and areal objects) were presented to expert and non-expert map users and analysed accordingly. Additionally, the effect of gender variation was taken into account. The data were aggregated and studied for each graphical variable. For some combinations of Bertin’s variables, statistically significant differences were detected in the preferences of the different map users (e.g., male vs. female and expert vs. non-expert). Consequently, we identified which graphical variables (individually or combined) were more preferred by specific user groups in relation to their application on text objects.