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Immediate first impression: I don't like the font. So I took a closer look at it and I think the gray is too bright and the font itself... Well, it isn't too b

Immediate first impression: I don't like the font. So I took a closer look at it and I think the gray is too bright and the font itself... Well, it isn't too bad, but I wouldn't consider it elegant nor readable. Apart from the font, I like the clean look and minimal layout. I hope this feedback helps to improve the theme for future versions ;-)

nthnclrk 7y ago
+1 on this. Something easier to read, and—to match the posts description—elegant would make this a much more attractive theme. Not that it's hard to swap it out for anyone who likes the theme otherwise, but worth considering changing since first impressions will influence downloads/usage.
popeshoe 7y ago
I was going to post the same thing, I bet it looks great on a retina mac screen, but on my windows machine with a monitor too big for 1080p, something about it feels off. Otherwise I think it looks great though, nice job!
burtonator 7y ago
color is off too... the grey is too light and hard to read.
gloflo 7y ago
The font is about 200% too big on my phone. It managed to display just about 15 lines and does not allow zooming out...
WorldMaker 7y ago
It's another case of a designer using a Light font weight (designed for large headings and posters) for body text instead of a Book weight which is actually designed by the font designer for body text usage. Font weight spectrums exist for a reason and the current trend of "all text should be Light weight" is just quite frustrating. Worse, in trying to get some of the designer's own guidelines on the font's usage (designers generally are good about letting you know what they think their font is useful for), I find it is clearly a commercial font that doesn't have an open license, so this GitHub repository shouldn't even be distributing it. https://www.myfonts.com/fonts/paratype/futura-book/ https://www.myfonts.com/fonts/paratype/futura-book/
sergiomattei 7y ago
Yep, font is awful.
panopticon 7y ago
Agreed. An incredibly distracting font. Workable as a title or subtitle font, but a horrible choice for body text.
ryanwhitney 7y ago
It's faux-bolded for me here. They're serving 'FuturaPTLight' and letting the browser make it stronger. Looks rough to the eyes.
chipotle_coyote 7y ago
Futura is a nice typeface, I would argue, but it's not a very good body typeface. And the commenter who noted that (a) this is specifying the "light" weight rather than the regular weight is correct; that's just not a good choice for body text. The low contrast of #555 text on #FFF background compounds the problem. (That's technically a WCAG Level AAA-compliant contrast ratio, but at 7.45:1, just barely; I like lighter-than-pure-black text on darker-than-pure-white background, but I tend to aim for at least a 12:1 contrast ratio on a site I expect people to be, you know, reading lots of text on.) That commenter is also right that Futura PT is a commercial, closed-source font, which makes this entire thing rather moot until this is fixed. Also: if you're going to include custom typefaces, for the love of all that's holy, please include the italic and bold versions of the typeface if they exist and you expect users to use them. Letting browsers make fake bold is bad enough; letting them just slant text to make fake italics is eye-bleeding.
- exergy 7y ago
  What are some good body fonts though? I would prefer stuff that is available on Windows. It's an eternal problem I struggle with, until I throw in the towel and say 'fuck it, let the user decide' and just put 'sans-serif' as the attribute. That, or use Arial.
  - chipotle_coyote 7y ago
    That's always subjective, which isn't a great answer. I never really liked sans serif fonts for body text, but there are a few that have convinced me otherwise -- off the top of my head, Fira Sans, Lato, Open Sans, and Source Sans Pro are all good, and all available on Google Fonts to boot. (If you don't want to have any downloaded fonts, you're kind of stuck with either really lowest common denominator stuff or doing a font stack and being okay with fonts changing a little depending on OS. Calibri and Candara are widely available on Windows, but hit-or-miss on Mac and virtually non-existent on Linux, for instance.)
Brajeshwar 7y ago
The theme is nice. Thanks. Forking it for my needs and will try to contribute back if I made meaningful edits. Will likely default the fonts to system fonts. ;-) Unless otherwise in dire need and the design is really augmented by a custom font, I'd like a thing for the web to stay with standard/system web-safe fonts. It works and can still be a really well-done typed website.
keithnz 7y ago
for me, it is actually a big eye strain trying to read this font.

nthnclrk 7y ago

+1 on this. Something easier to read, and—to match the posts description—elegant would make this a much more attractive theme. Not that it's hard to swap it out for anyone who likes the theme otherwise, but worth considering changing since first impressions will influence downloads/usage.

popeshoe 7y ago

I was going to post the same thing, I bet it looks great on a retina mac screen, but on my windows machine with a monitor too big for 1080p, something about it feels off. Otherwise I think it looks great though, nice job!

burtonator 7y ago

color is off too... the grey is too light and hard to read.

gloflo 7y ago

The font is about 200% too big on my phone. It managed to display just about 15 lines and does not allow zooming out...

WorldMaker 7y ago

It's another case of a designer using a Light font weight (designed for large headings and posters) for body text instead of a Book weight which is actually designed by the font designer for body text usage. Font weight spectrums exist for a reason and the current trend of "all text should be Light weight" is just quite frustrating. Worse, in trying to get some of the designer's own guidelines on the font's usage (designers generally are good about letting you know what they think their font is useful for), I find it is clearly a commercial font that doesn't have an open license, so this GitHub repository shouldn't even be distributing it. https://www.myfonts.com/fonts/paratype/futura-book/ https://www.myfonts.com/fonts/paratype/futura-book/

sergiomattei 7y ago

Yep, font is awful.

panopticon 7y ago

Agreed. An incredibly distracting font. Workable as a title or subtitle font, but a horrible choice for body text.

ryanwhitney 7y ago

It's faux-bolded for me here. They're serving 'FuturaPTLight' and letting the browser make it stronger. Looks rough to the eyes.

chipotle_coyote 7y ago

Futura is a nice typeface, I would argue, but it's not a very good body typeface. And the commenter who noted that (a) this is specifying the "light" weight rather than the regular weight is correct; that's just not a good choice for body text. The low contrast of #555 text on #FFF background compounds the problem. (That's technically a WCAG Level AAA-compliant contrast ratio, but at 7.45:1, just barely; I like lighter-than-pure-black text on darker-than-pure-white background, but I tend to aim for at least a 12:1 contrast ratio on a site I expect people to be, you know, reading lots of text on.) That commenter is also right that Futura PT is a commercial, closed-source font, which makes this entire thing rather moot until this is fixed. Also: if you're going to include custom typefaces, for the love of all that's holy, please include the italic and bold versions of the typeface if they exist and you expect users to use them. Letting browsers make fake bold is bad enough; letting them just slant text to make fake italics is eye-bleeding.

exergy 7y ago
What are some good body fonts though? I would prefer stuff that is available on Windows. It's an eternal problem I struggle with, until I throw in the towel and say 'fuck it, let the user decide' and just put 'sans-serif' as the attribute. That, or use Arial.
- chipotle_coyote 7y ago
  That's always subjective, which isn't a great answer. I never really liked sans serif fonts for body text, but there are a few that have convinced me otherwise -- off the top of my head, Fira Sans, Lato, Open Sans, and Source Sans Pro are all good, and all available on Google Fonts to boot. (If you don't want to have any downloaded fonts, you're kind of stuck with either really lowest common denominator stuff or doing a font stack and being okay with fonts changing a little depending on OS. Calibri and Candara are widely available on Windows, but hit-or-miss on Mac and virtually non-existent on Linux, for instance.)

Brajeshwar 7y ago

The theme is nice. Thanks. Forking it for my needs and will try to contribute back if I made meaningful edits. Will likely default the fonts to system fonts. ;-) Unless otherwise in dire need and the design is really augmented by a custom font, I'd like a thing for the web to stay with standard/system web-safe fonts. It works and can still be a really well-done typed website.

keithnz 7y ago

for me, it is actually a big eye strain trying to read this font.