TN, VA, IPS AND OLED

what differs inside the cell · and a paper describing each mode

Built as a memo rather than a table: the thing worth hanging it up for reads across the room, with the full reference in smaller type below it.

Three sizes in one archive — from a sheet on the fridge to a poster on the wall.

Formats: A4 · A3 · A2
What you get: Print-ready PDFs, one per size, with every letterform converted to outlines — nothing to install, nothing to shift.
Subject: science · everyone · reference · study

The cell drawings show how the molecules lie: a rod turned end-on to the eye reads as a dot. Under each type is a paper in which that mode is described, with its DOI: it can be looked up and read.

THE LAMP IN AN LCD NEVER GOES OUT

There is no black in an LCD: the backlight burns exactly as brightly on a black frame as on a white one, and the picture is made by stopping part of that light at the second polariser. How well it is stopped is the whole difference between the types.

So every type is an answer to the question of how to turn the molecules. TN, the oldest of them (1971), twists the layer through a quarter turn and switches the twist off with voltage. VA stands the molecules across the layer, so at rest almost nothing gets through — hence the deepest black among the liquid-crystal types. IPS moves both electrodes onto one plate, so the molecules turn within the plane of the screen instead of rising out of it.

OLED leaves the argument altogether: no lamp, no crystal, no polarisers — the pixel itself emits. A pixel that is off emits nothing, and black finally means off.

On the sheet

The cell drawings show how the molecules lie: a rod turned end-on to the eye reads as a dot. Under each type is a paper in which that mode is described, with its DOI: it can be looked up and read.
Colour carries meaning, but meaning never rests on colour alone — the sheet reads in black and white.
Nothing about how it was made: the sheet carries only what the reader needs.

Printing

Three sizes in the archive: A4 — 210×297 mm, A3 — 297×420 mm, A2 — 420×594 mm.
All text is converted to outlines. No fonts to install, and nothing shifts on another machine.
White background and sparing fills — it prints on a home printer without draining the cartridge.
Margins of at least 10 mm: a home printer cannot print to the edge.
No stroke thinner than 0.3 mm, so nothing disappears in print.

Why the numbers can be trusted. Every countable number here is computed from data rather than typed in, and the sheet must pass 9 independent checks before it is allowed to build — how many items there are, the order they come in, and the claim in the highlighted box itself. If one fails, there is no file.

TN, VA, IPS AND OLED

THE LAMP IN AN LCD NEVER GOES OUT

On the sheet

Printing

More like this

THE BEAUFORT SCALE

THE VERTICAL PLANET

MAMMALS IN TIME

VERTEBRATES IN TIME