The average taste in type gets old very quickly.

I recently taught a course of type design to graphic design students.
The goal was to create the students' version of a contemporary generic sans, through consensus.

One thing I will say: the taste that is expressed through the process of design is emergent, and dependent on the way in which the designer(s) use their tools, no matter how automated the process may be.

The taste that may be appraised by choosing preferences amongst existing types that people have seen is somewhat different.
And the taste that may be appraised by choosing preferences amongst existing fonts that people have used is different again.

So you are setting yourself an extremely tall order if you expect a generated font to be able to recreate the opinions and ideas of the massive.

**

There is another problem with averaging.
Say you're considering serifs.
If 40% prefer serifs and 60% sans, the average will be a semi-serif, which nobody prefers.
And it wouldn't be at all representative.

I like Averia as it's a nifty little mix of computer science mixed with art and the end result is rather interesting in its own way.

It is what it is and it's interesting and looks nice. But it's not a treatise based on deep scientific analysis of the opinions and science of type searching for some profound revelation.

I guess what I'm saying is that your intent may be noble, but it's really way out there. I'd step back a bit and first ask yourself what problem or question are you trying to solve by figuring out what your classmates thing about what defines 'average type'?

My advice would be to ground it a bit. The reason things like Averia worked is *because* of a defined (if not arbitrary) subset of data was used.

(Also, this feels a lot like "what happens when we design by committee". That question, sadly, has already been answered and tends to be answered daily in most corporate settings.)

Related:
http://typophile.com/node/85705
http://typophile.com/node/14315
http://typophile.com/node/39813
http://typophile.com/node/39387

Even though the results are difficult to use,
this is a superb enabler of thought in design.
To me much more interesting than merely
expression for its own sake.

But -in anything- beware extremes!
http://www.themicrofoundry.com/ss_uniglyph1.html

hhp

Thanks for the feedback!

My intent is to produce both an average serif and an average sans, so the research result would be splitted into the two categories.
I like the results of the averia, as the serifs and the sans have morphed into a very particular kind of shape (much like a gross version of the Optima corrections), but I'd prefer a more 'ordinary' and 'familiar' look.

I know that actual representation of a typographic taste is almost utopic (and the wider the chosen subjects, the more utopic the representation gets), but that wasn't the real scope of the project.

What I'd really like to realise is to let all the students participate by their feedbacks and opinions on my project, but since most of them do not have a specific education in type design, they'll naturally refer to existing typefaces in order to express their views and opinions.

I'd like to create some sort of memetic and psychological link in between the resulting typeface and the final users of the typeface.

Intermission/further explanation: the more I study modern design practices, the more I realise that in a complex system like nowadays society, the designer is just an operator among operators, while the old creators-to-users system is collapsing fast. This was the first spark that brought my attention to the fact that, in order to create a typeface that really works for the users-operators (i.e. academy students), I should give the highest priority to their feedbacks and needs. As a vast number of those students do not really care about type design, the first consideration would be to abandon the project, as the final users do not need a specific typeface for them. But this year my academy is also finally establishing a visual identity of his own, after fifty years of basically lying in a 'identity limbo', and in my opinion a typeface is a very important part of the visual identity of an academy where a good number of students do study type design, whether they care or not.