The Wall Street Journal commissioned Frere-Jones to design this typeface for its financial tables to increase legibility while condensing the letterforms to save space. Informed by how the human eye perceives fine print, he designed Retina to be used at small sizes—7 point or below—and made its letterforms as dissimilar from one another as possible, prioritizing readability over visual uniformity. He cut notches, or “ink traps,” into the glyphs—the visual representations of characters, such as letters or punctuation marks, in typesetting—to compensate for ink spread on poor-quality paper. Many newspapers now use Retina for high-density texts, including stock listings, sports scores, and classified ads.
Pirouette: Turning Points in Design, January 26, 2025–November 15, 2025
Gallery label from Standard Deviations , 2011
The Wall Street Journal commissioned this typeface for its financial tables with the goal of increasing legibility while condensing the letterforms to save space. Designed to be used at very small sizes—7-point or below—Retina departs from traditional letterforms altogether to instead provide letters that are as dissimilar from one another as possible. Retina, in the words of the designers, fills in what "human eye needs and what the brain expects" when reading very fine print. By playing up the differences between each letter, the designers have taken "its essence, the thing that makes it this letter and not something else" and amplified it. Notches, or ink traps, are cut into the glyphs to compensate for ink spread on poor-quality paper. Many newspapers now use Retina not only for stock listings but also for sports scores, classified ads, movie and TV listings, and other high-density texts.
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