4 ms·
I hope this crap of having drawings instead of actual text never catches on.
by hgq 8y ago
I hope this crap of having drawings instead of actual text never catches on.
- bahador 8y agoThe author is an artist/illustrator. That is her medium. http://wendymacnaughton.com/ http://wendymacnaughton.com/
- hgq 8y agoWhen I click in a newspaper link I expect to read text, not infantile drawings.
- dpark 8y agoYou may not like it (I don't either), but calling professional illustrations "infantile" is somewhat absurd.
- zython 8y agoHow's that infantile ? As far as I can see all the people are more or less drawn anatomically correct and IMO it looks good. Have you ever seen something drawn by an infant ?
- Retra 8y agoThe criticism is not because it is "by" an infant, but "for" an infant.
- code_duck 8y agoI’m skeptical that that is actually the intended audience, though
- Retra 8y agoObviously not. And it's not a fair criticism either way, but that is the criticism. Nobody is accusing the author of drawing like an infant.
- code_duck 8y agoInfantile might be a bit of an exaggeration. Juvenile, perhaps?
- Retra 8y agoWell I'd say neither of those things. The gulf between a child and an adult is really not that wide when it comes to matters such as taste and reasoning ability.
- code_duck 8y agoReally, so there’s not much difference between infants and adults when it comes to taste and reasoning ability. That’s an unusual assertion.
- drusepth 8y agoI would imagine the OP you're responding to was referring to the "drawings" of text, which look straight out of one of those kindergarten "write this letter 100 times to practice it" books. The people/illustrations are pretty good, and wouldn't be out of the ordinary accompanying regular text.
- dpark 8y ago> I would imagine the OP you're responding to was referring to the "drawings" of text, which look straight out of one of those kindergarten "write this letter 100 times to practice it" books. This would make a lot more sense if this was at all what kindergarten handwriting looks like.
- mturmon 8y agoI wonder if Christoph Niemann's beautiful drawings could change your mind: https://niemann.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/01/02/yet-another-brand-new-me/ https://niemann.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/01/02/yet-another-bra...
- mlindner 8y agoAn artist and illustrator can use fonts or create their own.
- basil-rash 8y agoI don't think we should tell artists what they can/can't do, but I do think it would be reasonable for the New York Times to enforce that all content they host is made as accessible as reasonably possible, for some definition of that. This could be made much more accessible by just including appropriate captions, and doing so would benefit a large part of the community.
- nkrisc 8y agoThen I would suggest she work on her penmanship. I found it very difficult to read.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- snazz 8y agoI agree that it’s annoying for a longform article or something like documentation, but with the drawings on the sides I think it works fine for this application.
- legohead 8y agoDon't tell The Oatmeal!
- Forbo 8y agoIf they provided caption text so it wasn't as accessibility hostile then it might be somewhat excusable. As it was, trying to read the handwriting was definitely annoying.
- ryanmcbride 8y agoI don't have an issue with the format itself, but you're absolutely right that it's an accessibility nightmare. The worst part is that it's so easy for it not to be. I thought maybe since there's no descriptive text alongside images, that there was probably something in the alt tags. However, the alt tags for each image are just empty quotes. For all intents and purposes this is just a blank page for anyone using a screen reader. Hey everyone, use descriptive alt tags for your images. It takes 10 seconds and makes a big difference.
- pvaldes 8y agoShort question, Short answer with nice drawings as a bonus. Perfect and logical way to send the message and a lot of time saved for the reader. There is not need to rewrite "the brothers Karamazov ate on a sushi restaurant" for such simple question.
- btashton 8y agoI actually really enjoyed it as a short illustrated story. If this was written as a formal NTY article, it would have been five sentences and not particularly memorable.
- darkpuma 8y ago>"If this was written as a formal NTY article, it would have been five sentences and not particularly memorable." Maybe an attempt should have been made to do the story justice then. Discuss where these plastic things came from, who got the idea and when? How did their use spread? And the story doesn't even contain any hint of environmental criticism. It's an incredibly weak article, and you can tell the editors knew that because of the vague headline they created for it, meant to make people curious. If the headline said "The $0.006 'Plastic Grass' in Your Sushi Container Is Doing an Important Job" far fewer people would have clicked on the article because 'it keeps food separate' is self-evident to anybody who's ever seen it. Better yet would be "The $0.006 'Plastic Grass' in Your Sushi Container Is For Keeping Food Separate." The brief digression into the original bamboo leaf form was slightly interesting, but this article should have gone much deeper to justify itself.