6 ms·
Finally, on CBS, the football matches the business cards
- JaggerFoo 5y agoWhat about possession of the ball? Only Fox seems to show this with a dot next to a teams score. I often glance at the score box when busy, but have wait to see which team takes possession to know the current state of the game before I can continue my busy work away from the TV.
- mod 5y agoFrom the article: > Amid its grandeur, NBC also maintains touches of subtlety—such as the tiny possession indicator above each team’s score In later CBS screenshots, you can see it indicated sometimes. When it shows "3rd & 7", that box will be filled with the team color of the team in possession. It's not a permanent box, though.
- dlbucci 5y agoRead through this whole thing thinking it was filling the "Block & Tackle"-sized hole in my heart, only to realize by the end that this was also authored by John Teti! I'm glad he's still doing it, cause B&T was weekly reading for me back in the day :)
- wolverine876 5y agoYou may be happy to click here: https://www.ological.net/author/john/ https://www.ological.net/author/john/
- harrydehal 5y agoWhatever the other failings of this redesign, the ampersand is a winner, a full-bodied, chewy soft pretzel of a thing. I want to bite into that ampersand and feel its warm, doughy goodness fill the spaces between my teeth. I enjoyed this fun poke at television UX far more than I enjoy watching football. Thanks for sharing!
- geoduck14 5y ago>Go on, try to find a more graceful down-and-distance ampersand. You can’t. That ampersand is a little butler, gently pouring you a teacup of chamomile football. This guy has opinions about ampersands that I didn't know someone could have. It was delightful and makes me glad I'm on HN.
- HPsquared 5y ago"Look at that subtle off-white coloring, the tasteful thickness of it..."
- mlavin 5y agoLet's see ESPN get a reservation at Dorsia now!
- Matthias1 5y agoI don’t agree with a lot of this article. I think the font looks excellent, I appreciate coherencies across a brand’s design, and most of all, I think the purpose of a score indicator over a football game is to tell you the score, and get out of the way. That being said, these are opinions, and I’m glad there’s someone else who pays attention to the design language used by football broadcasters.
- ddek 5y ago> That being said, these are opinions, and I’m glad there’s someone else who pays attention to the design language used by football broadcasters. I feel like once you have the knowledge to pay attention to design language you are now cursed to do so everywhere. It's like the curse of a trained ear - congratulations on being able to hear any chord progression, now you can't escape every song you ever liked being the same 4 chords over and over again.
- adzm 5y ago> I feel like once you have the knowledge to pay attention to design language you are now cursed to do so everywhere. It is very true. A common example is kerning (hence the joke, keming). Once you learn the nuances of spacing between letters you start to notice it everywhere. There was also a great SNL skit about a graphics designer who was haunted by the Avatar logo which was simply the papyrus font.
- jsjohnst 5y ago> I feel like once you have the knowledge to pay attention to design language you are now cursed to do so everywhere. For a long time in my career as a software engineer I mostly avoided this, but a little over a decade ago I had a designer who beat tiny details into everyone on the team. I kinda feel like he took away my innocence to some extent, as I can’t look at fonts, colors, and other design details anymore without noticing all the flaws so pervasive all around us.
- mattbrewsbytes 5y agoI've never paid any attention to the UX of the score box until I read this. I agree with a lot of the sentiment and the tone of the article is hilarious. Most fans watching sports only look at score boxes when they were away from the broadcast for some reason. If you are intensely watching your favorite team, you don't even need a score box. I've seen corporate re-branding efforts first hand and his introspection to how, potentially, CBS is always about the CBS-way is kinda funny. This is kind of like how I think system integration issues inside a software company almost are a tell of how the org is structured.
- bitwize 5y ago> It's an iPhone 13 sort of update, with no compelling reason to exist other than somebody decided it was time for it to exist. Funny he should mention that, because the CBS graphics look to me like Windows 11: flat, seemingly uniform, nicely subtly gradiented, but subtly inconsistent in an irritating, pebble-in-shoe kind of way.
- cjf4 5y agoAnything that moves away from the CBSness is a good thing. Their broadcasts have been second rate mediocrities since they’ve had the rights: - Completely bland theme music. - Half-witted former QB analysts (other than Romo). - The worst studio show. The other networks (particularly NBC) do a way better job.
- VWWHFSfQ 5y ago* Their studio show is by far the best * Nantz and Romo are by far the best broadcast crew * NBC is old hat at this point. Nobody wants to listen to Collinsworth anymore
- throwaway9980 5y agoCris Collinsworth, yes it’s spelled Cris, makes me want to rend my ears from my skull. Collinsworth and Al Michaels is like some kind of perfectly seasoned stew of stupidity worthy of Idiocracy. Listening to the two of them I can’t help but constantly think of the NFL as bread and circuses meant to placate a mentally degraded populace.
- mlavin 5y agoNow here's a guy who can really break down what ruins a broadcast crew.
- dylan604 5y agoThe Manning Bros are interesting
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- poulsbohemian 5y agoI’d still take Collinsworth over aikman and buck, and his commentary is still better than any of the sports radio Monday morning armchair quarterbacks.
- lilboiluvr69 5y agoThis article has no right to be as well written as it is.
- geoduck14 5y agoI know, right? I hope one day he stumbles on the website for my work and does a writeup.
- morley 5y agoThe article has every right to be this good: the writer is John Teti, who used to be editor in chief of the AV Club (and hosted its short-lived tv show). If you've never read his football column Block and Tackle, it's great: and I haven't followed football since the mid-90s! https://www.avclub.com/tv/sports https://www.avclub.com/tv/sports
- wolverine876 5y agoHe has a column: https://www.ological.net/author/john/ https://www.ological.net/author/john/
- morley 5y agoOlogical is his personal site!
- mulmen 5y agoWhy don't any of these score displays show the field position? It's 3rd and 8 but are we in field goal range? Gotta wait for a camera angle that shows the field.
- raldi 5y agoSimilarly, if it’s “3rd & GOAL”, how much farther is there to go? Nine and a half yards? Three inches?
- beerandt 5y agoPretty standard for them to call out "3rd & Goal from the 5" or, graphically, above "3rd & goal" a pop-up text with an arrow ">Ball at %Team% 5".
- jancsika 5y agoThey probably change to "3rd & Inches" when it's less than a yard.
- jancsika 5y agoHowever, you'd have to know that "Inches" is a possibility to deduce that "GOAL" is more than mere inches to go. I'll summon my FOSS-based knowledge of UX to suggest a change: Change "3rd & GOAL" to "3rd -g --ONLY_INCHES_TO_GO=NULL" and "3rd & INCHES" to "3rd -g --ONLY_INCHES_TO_GO=4"
- beerandt 5y agoThey do not. 3rd & inches from the 1 would indicate the chance to get a 1st down, and additional downs to score.
- gremIin 5y agoBroadcasts often have something like "3rd & Goal. Ball at opp 6" or "1st & 10. Ball at own 25".
- handmodel 5y ago
- pests 5y ago"The vest is a remnant of 19th-century football rules, in which this role would have been held by a beekeeper, who tended the hive of angry bees used to mark first down." Is this true? I can't tell if he's being legit here or just running with a joke.
- chrisrogers 5y agoIt's a joke about the uniform
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- leephillips 5y agoI often warn people that, no matter how off-the-scale obviously ridiculous you think your absurd, satirical jest may be, there will, not maybe, not probably, but will definitely be, somewhere, someone who takes you literally.