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I think Matthew is doing great work. I have a lotmof respect for what he does and how he goes about it. I find that many things he says are good ways to make pl

by bjoli 6y ago

I think Matthew is doing great work. I have a lotmof respect for what he does and how he goes about it. I find that many things he says are good ways to make pleasant to read (and legible) documents. But: Please do use Arial. I find it better than about 95% of the choices done by "people that care about typography". Or even better, let other people that care about how their web experience looks chose for themselves. I had the habit of not allowing websites to use their own fonts, but since about 5 years this has led to so much breakage because apparently I HAVE to download 700kb of fonts to render the site properly. Even though browsers have started rendering web fonts OKish the last couple of years, I still encounter sites daily where I would prefer a monospaced font to whatever abomination the site is using. A bad choice of font is worse than an ok font that make a minuscule group think "this guy doesnt care about typography". ... And don't get me started on ligature abuse... Edit: for some reason though, people seem to produce better in-print material than web material. Maybe the tooling is better, or people just think it through better.

snoopen 6y ago
I am okay with people choosing whatever font they like, it's their content and their artistic freedom to do so. You HAVE to download their font to the same extent you have to download their images and CSS. There's always reading mode for when their choices aren't compatible with a given configuration. Having said that, I haven't come across many if any sites that don't render well because of poor font choices.
dragonwriter 6y ago
> Please do use Arial. I find it better than about 95% of the choices done by "people that care about typography". It may be better than 95% of the choices done by people who try to differentiate by picking a non-default font for the sake of picking a non-default font, which is certainly worse than just keeping the default, but I doubt very much that it is better than even 5% of the choices made by people who care about typography.
- bjoli 6y ago
  I am not so sure. Most of the self proclaimed typographers I have met seem to be the kind that spends ages selecting fonts and redesigning their blog or sites without producing any actual content and then whining on people that has content people actually wants to read. Not only is there no content, the little that is available is almost baroque. I feel sorry for the people who do know what they are talking about because of the people they have to share community with. Edit: I come of as something of a prick. I know. In reality I don't really care. I just find that so much time spent making my web experience worse, and it is provoking. Most of what I read is PDFs (preferably printed) typeset using latex in computer modern, and I like it that way.
HelloNurse 6y ago
Adopting Arial is at the intersection of several classes of bad web font choices: - random, because it ended up being the browser's default sans serif; - someone not really interested in typography went through their available fonts, i.e. system fonts and a few random ones, in alphabetical order and "A" offered enough choices for them; - "Arial" is a short simple word, and someone was too lazy to check or remember other font names; - an amateur designer made a pathetic attempt to reproduce totally inappropriate "Swiss" design, badly, or to be even more inappropriately ironic; - "overused" and therefore "fatal to the designer's credibility", in the euphemistic words of the linked article; a designer that doesn't realize that fonts can be overused has less familiarity with typography than the general public and is therefore not a designer.
- bjoli 6y ago
  Oh, I agree. It is all what you say it is. I would add boring and bland. Still more legible than the weird-ass Baskerville-geometric chimaera of a website I have open in another tab (which I won't name since I do like the guy).

by bjoli 6y ago

snoopen 6y ago

I am okay with people choosing whatever font they like, it's their content and their artistic freedom to do so. You HAVE to download their font to the same extent you have to download their images and CSS. There's always reading mode for when their choices aren't compatible with a given configuration. Having said that, I haven't come across many if any sites that don't render well because of poor font choices.

dragonwriter 6y ago

> Please do use Arial. I find it better than about 95% of the choices done by "people that care about typography". It may be better than 95% of the choices done by people who try to differentiate by picking a non-default font for the sake of picking a non-default font, which is certainly worse than just keeping the default, but I doubt very much that it is better than even 5% of the choices made by people who care about typography.

bjoli 6y ago
I am not so sure. Most of the self proclaimed typographers I have met seem to be the kind that spends ages selecting fonts and redesigning their blog or sites without producing any actual content and then whining on people that has content people actually wants to read. Not only is there no content, the little that is available is almost baroque. I feel sorry for the people who do know what they are talking about because of the people they have to share community with. Edit: I come of as something of a prick. I know. In reality I don't really care. I just find that so much time spent making my web experience worse, and it is provoking. Most of what I read is PDFs (preferably printed) typeset using latex in computer modern, and I like it that way.

HelloNurse 6y ago

Adopting Arial is at the intersection of several classes of bad web font choices: - random, because it ended up being the browser's default sans serif; - someone not really interested in typography went through their available fonts, i.e. system fonts and a few random ones, in alphabetical order and "A" offered enough choices for them; - "Arial" is a short simple word, and someone was too lazy to check or remember other font names; - an amateur designer made a pathetic attempt to reproduce totally inappropriate "Swiss" design, badly, or to be even more inappropriately ironic; - "overused" and therefore "fatal to the designer's credibility", in the euphemistic words of the linked article; a designer that doesn't realize that fonts can be overused has less familiarity with typography than the general public and is therefore not a designer.

bjoli 6y ago
Oh, I agree. It is all what you say it is. I would add boring and bland. Still more legible than the weird-ass Baskerville-geometric chimaera of a website I have open in another tab (which I won't name since I do like the guy).