🚀 go-pugleaf

You consider instinct and knowledge are physical processes or properties? Next you'll be telling me Father Christmas and the Tooth Fairy don't exist! (Please leave me some illusions!) 

Anyway, my query was prompted by your example of instinct and knowledge giving one such widely different takes on a particular layout. In my case, I would hope that my instinct wouldn't give me such a different result from a more considered approach, because in the same way that you say that readers know when a letterform is distorted, I would hope to instinctively recognise the unreadabilty of the piece of text and hence know that it wasn't suited to the task in hand. (In this way, I would agree that instinct is affected and informed by one's past experience and knowledge - in this case, the knowledge of the text and audience. My comment on when instinct becomes reasoning was directed more to the subsequent application of one's experiences and knowledge to temper the instinctive response.) 

I'm surprised by the response of some of your students. I can sort of see their point, but I do disagree with it. Design in a vacuum (at least as far as the text and the reader are concerned) seems somewhat self-indulgent to me. I think it more challenging and interesting to match the layout to the text rather than to create a layout and use it for whatever text comes along next. 

Cheers, Dominic