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There is a trend among web designers to use large, clear fonts and less clutter. I really like this style. After using a computer for more than 25 years, I ca

by Dowwie 8y ago

There is a trend among web designers to use large, clear fonts and less clutter. I really like this style. After using a computer for more than 25 years, I can't stand to see so much on screen at once. I may have developed a special need caused by prolonged information overload, but I may have also learned how to improve focus. Unfortunately, no style sheet will help people write clear and concise text. I continue to have to skim through lots of large text .

fuzzy2 8y ago
> There is a trend among web designers to use large, clear fonts and less clutter. I really like this style. I don’t. Because typically these redesigns do away with visually distinct borders on tables/elements/zones and make everything flat and indistinct. Because that’s cool right now. The new Kinguin frontpage is a very good example. I hate it.
- quietbritishjim 8y ago
  I think this might be in part due to Edward Tufte's philosophy, as especially described in his book The Visual Display of Quantitative Information [1]. He uses "ink to data ratio" as a measure of the effectiveness of numerical charts. This superficially makes sense: why add more visual noise if it adds no more information? As an example, he suggesting shortening the axes on scatter plots to reflect the range of data in each dimension, which is a win-win: it adds more information and reduces ink. Boxes around objects and lines separating things are specifically called out as especially evil, since they add ink without contributing any information. I think this idea may have leaked from quantitative displays to general design. The flaw of course is that more ink does not necessarily mean more visual noise. With the axes example, disconnecting them means that you now have two high-level visual objects rather than one, and the whole chart starts to looks like a mess of individual objects on the page. If you have several graphs next to each other then it's much easier to focus one and exclude the others if they're in boxes rather than having component objects floating indistinctly near each other. But Tufte only sees a count of black blobs of ink or black pixels, as if each one has its own mental cost. As an aside, the book is still fantastic because it has loads of examples of unconventional charts and figures, and you can just ignore the text (or, better, read it skeptically). I found out about it from xkcd originally [2] and I suspect that many others did too. [1] https://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_vdqi https://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_vdqi [2] https://xkcd.com/124/ https://xkcd.com/124/
- gowld 8y ago
  Ah, the modern classic pattern of "the search box is the only part of the page that matters, and it's invisible"
deleted 8y ago
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mkohlmyr 8y ago
I actually find this quite hard to read, partly the alignment so far to the right (not sure why that bothers me), but also the fonts - particularly the italic, to a lesser extent the regular. I found myself not very able to focus on the text at all. I suppose as with most things your mileage may vary.

by Dowwie 8y ago

fuzzy2 8y ago

> There is a trend among web designers to use large, clear fonts and less clutter. I really like this style. I don’t. Because typically these redesigns do away with visually distinct borders on tables/elements/zones and make everything flat and indistinct. Because that’s cool right now. The new Kinguin frontpage is a very good example. I hate it.

quietbritishjim 8y ago
I think this might be in part due to Edward Tufte's philosophy, as especially described in his book The Visual Display of Quantitative Information [1]. He uses "ink to data ratio" as a measure of the effectiveness of numerical charts. This superficially makes sense: why add more visual noise if it adds no more information? As an example, he suggesting shortening the axes on scatter plots to reflect the range of data in each dimension, which is a win-win: it adds more information and reduces ink. Boxes around objects and lines separating things are specifically called out as especially evil, since they add ink without contributing any information. I think this idea may have leaked from quantitative displays to general design. The flaw of course is that more ink does not necessarily mean more visual noise. With the axes example, disconnecting them means that you now have two high-level visual objects rather than one, and the whole chart starts to looks like a mess of individual objects on the page. If you have several graphs next to each other then it's much easier to focus one and exclude the others if they're in boxes rather than having component objects floating indistinctly near each other. But Tufte only sees a count of black blobs of ink or black pixels, as if each one has its own mental cost. As an aside, the book is still fantastic because it has loads of examples of unconventional charts and figures, and you can just ignore the text (or, better, read it skeptically). I found out about it from xkcd originally [2] and I suspect that many others did too. [1] https://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_vdqi https://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_vdqi [2] https://xkcd.com/124/ https://xkcd.com/124/
gowld 8y ago
Ah, the modern classic pattern of "the search box is the only part of the page that matters, and it's invisible"

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

mkohlmyr 8y ago

I actually find this quite hard to read, partly the alignment so far to the right (not sure why that bothers me), but also the fonts - particularly the italic, to a lesser extent the regular. I found myself not very able to focus on the text at all. I suppose as with most things your mileage may vary.