10 ms·

> If they had just changed fonts midway through a paragraph, I doubt I would have noticed beyond a simple "something's different, but I can't put my finger on i

> If they had just changed fonts midway through a paragraph, I doubt I would have noticed beyond a simple "something's different, but I can't put my finger on it." So you do get it, just on a subconscious level! That's exactly what good font design is all about: being invisible. It just so happens that being unnoticeable is incredibly difficult to achieve, and changes all the time with culture. A good font matches the tone of your message while remaining clear and understandable. That's because fonts aren't for robots, they're meant to be read by humans. What Mozilla is doing here is actually a branding exercise!

tallblondeguy 9y ago
Yeah, and it's really encouraging to see out of an open-source-centric company. OSS tends to get knocked for poor design chops (LibreOffice's and GIMP's UI/iconography comes to mind here) so, as someone who's dabbled in typeface creation, I get excited to see a company spending money to do typography right. For those who don't notice consciously it'll do something on a subconscious level. For those who do notice the difference between Arial and Helvetica, it can make a world of difference.
Jemaclus 9y ago
Well, I guess my point is that it wouldn't have added or taken anything away from the experience. I notice color and contrast a lot more than I notice typeface. The number of times I've said to myself "this font choice is awful" is pretty small, and is limited to relatively crazy fonts. I wouldn't notice the difference between Zilla Slab and any other slab font, other than the special colon/i thing they did. I don't even know what a slab font is, and I couldn't pick one out of a lineup of random fonts.
- phailhaus 9y ago
  > Well, I guess my point is that it wouldn't have added or taken anything away from the experience You already said that you would have felt like something was off. That's detracting from the experience even though you don't consciously know why. A ton of effort goes into choosing the fonts of the hundred different things you see every day, so you've been trained to unconsciously associate different fonts with different feelings. You don't need to be able to pick a font out of a lineup in order for font choice to affect your experience. If I spend enough time on Mozilla's site, I'm going to start associating Zilla Slab with internet-related things, even though I still can't distinguish slab fonts. Your brain's good at things like that.

tallblondeguy 9y ago

Yeah, and it's really encouraging to see out of an open-source-centric company. OSS tends to get knocked for poor design chops (LibreOffice's and GIMP's UI/iconography comes to mind here) so, as someone who's dabbled in typeface creation, I get excited to see a company spending money to do typography right. For those who don't notice consciously it'll do something on a subconscious level. For those who do notice the difference between Arial and Helvetica, it can make a world of difference.

Jemaclus 9y ago

Well, I guess my point is that it wouldn't have added or taken anything away from the experience. I notice color and contrast a lot more than I notice typeface. The number of times I've said to myself "this font choice is awful" is pretty small, and is limited to relatively crazy fonts. I wouldn't notice the difference between Zilla Slab and any other slab font, other than the special colon/i thing they did. I don't even know what a slab font is, and I couldn't pick one out of a lineup of random fonts.

phailhaus 9y ago
> Well, I guess my point is that it wouldn't have added or taken anything away from the experience You already said that you would have felt like something was off. That's detracting from the experience even though you don't consciously know why. A ton of effort goes into choosing the fonts of the hundred different things you see every day, so you've been trained to unconsciously associate different fonts with different feelings. You don't need to be able to pick a font out of a lineup in order for font choice to affect your experience. If I spend enough time on Mozilla's site, I'm going to start associating Zilla Slab with internet-related things, even though I still can't distinguish slab fonts. Your brain's good at things like that.