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I am fascinated by typography and page design and enjoy reading about it, but I have to admit I don't understand how this level of pedantry is able to survive.

I am fascinated by typography and page design and enjoy reading about it, but I have to admit I don't understand how this level of pedantry is able to survive. The amount of documentation and attention to detail spent on typefaces and when to use them is often off the charts compared to the time spent on stuff like keeping the website running, documenting the API or even the basic functionality of the app. It's like if someone grows oak trees for a century and slices veneer from it with a handcrafted blade and soaks it in coconut oil for a year before slapping it on a IKEA pulp honeycomb. :)

mlsu 3y ago
It is actually amazing how much effort is seemingly expended on things like this. I think it's pretty simple: - there are a lot of people out there who love obsessing over typography - they want to obsess over typography - so they invent a purpose for obsessing over typography I love it, I'm here for it, and I think we should give people money for obsessing over typography.
- notatoad 3y ago
  i think it's even simpler - there are not that many people out there who love obsessing about typography - the few that do have figured out that they can make a viable business of selling typefaces for slightly less than the cost of licencing helvetica - writing a document like the one linked here makes people feel a bit better about cutting a big cheque for a typeface
- Kon5ole 3y ago
  I suspect you're on to something ;-) It might also be that people who obsess about typography are more inclined to create pretty documents whenever they can. API authors and DB designers are maybe less interested in making pretty documents, which is why their (at the very least equally important work) is often described in a readme.txt meant to be read from the terminal in the typeface of the reader's choice.
  - jacobr1 3y ago
    I've met DBAs, when that role was more common, that obsessed over creating ERDs and other data digrams - posted them all over the walls. But that was because they wanted to do it and were sufficiently empowered. It clearly was related to their work, but most other engineers wouldn't really have cared if they existed or not.
- imiric 3y ago
  I think that's an overly cynical take for the work type designers do. Design in general is highly detail oriented. In interior design, there are philosophies about the proper arrangement of furniture (feng shui). In visual design the balance of colors is crucial, and there are complex theories about the best ways to match and offset colors. This is highly technical work that might seem overly pedantic to outsiders, but really has an established theory about how it impacts the viewer. So is the case with type design. There are infinite combinations of shapes and sizes of symbols, and an entire science behind how humans interpret characters to form words and communicate ideas. Think about how much design went into just this paragraph you're reading. A bad type can be tiring to read, while a good one can make the words flow off the page/screen. As readers, we take this for granted, but a type designer needs to take all this into consideration. Consider the work it takes to design a logotype, and how it sometime seems deceptively simple, when in reality it takes a keen eye to design a brand logo. Now extrapolate that to all letters of all alphabets that a modern type should support, and it's no wonder that great type designers deserve all the praise and recognition. So, yes, all these documents are necessary, and explain the intent of the designer, or how the user feels the type helps with transmitting their message.
- MAGZine 3y ago
  It is actually amazing how much effort is seemingly expended on things like this. I think it's pretty simple: - there are a lot of people out there who love obsessing over software - they want to obsess over software - so they invent a purpose for obsessing over software I love it, I'm here for it, and I think we should give people money for obsessing over software. Just because it's simple on the surface does not mean that there's a lot that goes into it, or that the details don't matter. I feel like what you've written is a little reductionist to the hard work people put into designing frameworks for communications like this, and how much it can help to give voice and unify messaging in intra- and inter-institution communication. How do you keep two government agencies on the same page wrt to design language? or is it ok that one agency likes to produce communications in comic sans while the other uses sans and the third uses helvetica? It's one of those 99% invisible things.
agloe_dreams 3y ago
Typographic documentation is for designers generally, but there is a world where this can actually help everyone. Designers should make consistent designs. By doing this Developers can create functional designs systems that have sane default behaviors. Once you can get to that point, the system serves to reduce the load from the dev, not increase. I have created a tailwind-based design system interpretation like this in the education space at a rather large scale. Our designs and our tailwind-config comes from the same spec. Doing this removes the engineer from thought by reducing options and possibilities. It also serves as check and balance. Paddings, font-weights, all of it are consistent. Designs that deviate from line-height, padding, weights, colors, etc are incorrect mocks and our configured values will make it obvious to the dev. Code that deviates from the spec is incorrect. This requires a good communication flow between Eng and UX but actually works in practice. In a functioning system, it is a weight off your shoulders as you end up knowing the defaults just by looking at something. Might I also remind you, the point of the entire backend of an app is to serve the front end. An app with amazing backend practices but fails at matching designs or specs is just a failure and is noticeable by customers.
- blowski 3y ago
  I agree with much of your comment, but take umbrage with: > the point of the entire backend of an app is to serve the front end It’s a phoney argument. Once can just as easily say “the whole point of a front end is to provide simple access to the backend, rather than doing it via APIs”. The whole system is important. Some backends have appalling frontends and are still popular. The opposite is also true.
  - agloe_dreams 3y ago
    I was kinda hoping that the OP would counter with that line and then I would agree and make exactly your point haha. My point was simply that the system is interdependent as opposed to the OP's take that the FE consistency doesn't matter.
    - Kon5ole 3y ago
themodelplumber 3y ago
This type of guideline can be extremely helpful in a number of ways. People at various levels and with various levels of training tend to love to be creative at the expense of huge brand campaigns, so the branding design team has to find ways to reign in those passions. Technical access is generally much more limited for such people than is access to de facto brand representation through graphical presentation. If it's a differential comparison vs. tech then that differential should be treated as its own issue, not an issue of design guidelines deserving a label like pedantry just because something else isn't as well-planned or documented.
WorldMaker 3y ago
It is generally different roles of people working on design guides like this versus working on documenting an API or other "basic functionality". It's not necessarily a zero sum effort (and probably often is entirely not) to produce design guides and work on other technical requirements at the same time. Also, design, including and sometimes especially typography, is accessibility and is often worth that sort of attention to detail for exactly that reason, keeping designs accessible to all users. Defining contrasts and visual hierarchy hugely influences how accessible something using a design might be. One specific example I see is the callout in this particular example for using much less UPPERCASE text moving forward from whatever their previous design language was. This is something I know that I've fought designers I've worked with over as an accessibility problem they've missed. (It's also something that Microsoft went through a huge accidental blow up in very public with early "Metro" designs that they had to apologize for and then walk back in consequent "Fluent" designs.) In general people read word shapes more than individual letters, uppercase forms a lot of very similar looking "rectangles" and even for readers with no other obvious dyslexia uppercase words are the visual equivalent of "speed bumps" in a roadway. They slow reading, sometimes to a crawl, and generally just get in the way, for all readers. (For dyslexic readers I've known they sometimes are even more "walls" than simply "speed bumps" and text entirely in uppercase will completely upset them, if not make the content 100% inaccessible to them and they will nope out entirely.) That's an important thing about typography that is easy to miss. I've seen so many designs use all uppercase text in places simply because it "looks nice" (those "all words create about the same sort of rectangular shape" that makes a dyslexic viewpoint absolutely hate seeing all uppercase text add a regularity and "cleanliness" to design shapes that some designers find they love; one person's massive accessibility bug is another's aesthetic feature).
at-fates-hands 3y ago
>> I am fascinated by typography and page design and enjoy reading about it You should check out the Netflix series: Abstract: The Art of Design Episode: Jonathan Hoefler: Typeface Design The guy has some of the most important typefaces. The episode does an amazing job detailing his career and how they develop new typefaces. His work is literally everywhere and its super fascinating some of the misconceptions about type.
- chrstphrknwtn 3y ago
  Also check out Tobias Frere-Jones [1], Johnathon Hoefler's partner who was allegedly screwed out his share of their partnership. [2] 1. https://frerejones.com https://frerejones.com 2. https://nymag.com/news/features/jonathan-hoefler-tobias-frere-jones-2014-6/ https://nymag.com/news/features/jonathan-hoefler-tobias-frer...
jw1224 3y ago
> CONTRIBUTING.md
makeitdouble 3y ago
From the website running and dev side, I'd argue time spent on typography and page design guidelines have super high ROI. First, it's basically one shot: once you have a type face and yhe guideline, only small tweaks are needed down the line. Changing it willy nilly has too much impact that it's just not an option either way. So you better spend time having it right. Then it will be referred to in millions of places. Every single site made by the Swedish government will have to look at this guideline and decide where to use Sweden sans and when to use Noto. For their own project it wil be a small decision, but in aggregate the better the guideline is the lesser time needs to be spent bikeshedding on which font to use and if Times New Roman is acceptable.
wildpeaks 3y ago
Craftmanship is its own reward (and a lot of Web 1.0 websites were this kind of passionate people sharing their niche knowledge).
hoosieree 3y ago
Fractionated coconut oil or gtfo.
mediascreen 3y ago
Well, this is is not guidelines for an app or a website. This is guidelines for how the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Enterprise and Innovation, the Ministry of Culture, the Swedish Institute, Business Sweden and Visit Sweden and the different agencies they use, should use typography when representing Sweden abroad. I don't think the type section is unusually large, but I worked at a company for two years that exclusively made design manuals, and the well made ones tend to look like this.
makstaks 3y ago
The documentation is pretty standard, it allows users of this typeface to build out a design system that scales.
Someone 3y ago
The amount of documentation and attention to detail spent on code layout and API design (example: whether array sizes should be signed to unsigned integers, whether to use (start, length) or (start, end) to specify ranges) is often off the charts, too, and those are things the users will never see. As in those cases, the investment in these kinds of guidelines should be worth it because less time gets spent on such discussions later and consistency of products is improved.

mlsu 3y ago

It is actually amazing how much effort is seemingly expended on things like this. I think it's pretty simple: - there are a lot of people out there who love obsessing over typography - they want to obsess over typography - so they invent a purpose for obsessing over typography I love it, I'm here for it, and I think we should give people money for obsessing over typography.

notatoad 3y ago
i think it's even simpler - there are not that many people out there who love obsessing about typography - the few that do have figured out that they can make a viable business of selling typefaces for slightly less than the cost of licencing helvetica - writing a document like the one linked here makes people feel a bit better about cutting a big cheque for a typeface
Kon5ole 3y ago
I suspect you're on to something ;-) It might also be that people who obsess about typography are more inclined to create pretty documents whenever they can. API authors and DB designers are maybe less interested in making pretty documents, which is why their (at the very least equally important work) is often described in a readme.txt meant to be read from the terminal in the typeface of the reader's choice.
- jacobr1 3y ago
  I've met DBAs, when that role was more common, that obsessed over creating ERDs and other data digrams - posted them all over the walls. But that was because they wanted to do it and were sufficiently empowered. It clearly was related to their work, but most other engineers wouldn't really have cared if they existed or not.
imiric 3y ago
I think that's an overly cynical take for the work type designers do. Design in general is highly detail oriented. In interior design, there are philosophies about the proper arrangement of furniture (feng shui). In visual design the balance of colors is crucial, and there are complex theories about the best ways to match and offset colors. This is highly technical work that might seem overly pedantic to outsiders, but really has an established theory about how it impacts the viewer. So is the case with type design. There are infinite combinations of shapes and sizes of symbols, and an entire science behind how humans interpret characters to form words and communicate ideas. Think about how much design went into just this paragraph you're reading. A bad type can be tiring to read, while a good one can make the words flow off the page/screen. As readers, we take this for granted, but a type designer needs to take all this into consideration. Consider the work it takes to design a logotype, and how it sometime seems deceptively simple, when in reality it takes a keen eye to design a brand logo. Now extrapolate that to all letters of all alphabets that a modern type should support, and it's no wonder that great type designers deserve all the praise and recognition. So, yes, all these documents are necessary, and explain the intent of the designer, or how the user feels the type helps with transmitting their message.
MAGZine 3y ago
It is actually amazing how much effort is seemingly expended on things like this. I think it's pretty simple: - there are a lot of people out there who love obsessing over software - they want to obsess over software - so they invent a purpose for obsessing over software I love it, I'm here for it, and I think we should give people money for obsessing over software. Just because it's simple on the surface does not mean that there's a lot that goes into it, or that the details don't matter. I feel like what you've written is a little reductionist to the hard work people put into designing frameworks for communications like this, and how much it can help to give voice and unify messaging in intra- and inter-institution communication. How do you keep two government agencies on the same page wrt to design language? or is it ok that one agency likes to produce communications in comic sans while the other uses sans and the third uses helvetica? It's one of those 99% invisible things.

agloe_dreams 3y ago

Typographic documentation is for designers generally, but there is a world where this can actually help everyone. Designers should make consistent designs. By doing this Developers can create functional designs systems that have sane default behaviors. Once you can get to that point, the system serves to reduce the load from the dev, not increase. I have created a tailwind-based design system interpretation like this in the education space at a rather large scale. Our designs and our tailwind-config comes from the same spec. Doing this removes the engineer from thought by reducing options and possibilities. It also serves as check and balance. Paddings, font-weights, all of it are consistent. Designs that deviate from line-height, padding, weights, colors, etc are incorrect mocks and our configured values will make it obvious to the dev. Code that deviates from the spec is incorrect. This requires a good communication flow between Eng and UX but actually works in practice. In a functioning system, it is a weight off your shoulders as you end up knowing the defaults just by looking at something. Might I also remind you, the point of the entire backend of an app is to serve the front end. An app with amazing backend practices but fails at matching designs or specs is just a failure and is noticeable by customers.

blowski 3y ago
I agree with much of your comment, but take umbrage with: > the point of the entire backend of an app is to serve the front end It’s a phoney argument. Once can just as easily say “the whole point of a front end is to provide simple access to the backend, rather than doing it via APIs”. The whole system is important. Some backends have appalling frontends and are still popular. The opposite is also true.
- agloe_dreams 3y ago
  I was kinda hoping that the OP would counter with that line and then I would agree and make exactly your point haha. My point was simply that the system is interdependent as opposed to the OP's take that the FE consistency doesn't matter.
  - Kon5ole 3y ago

themodelplumber 3y ago

This type of guideline can be extremely helpful in a number of ways. People at various levels and with various levels of training tend to love to be creative at the expense of huge brand campaigns, so the branding design team has to find ways to reign in those passions. Technical access is generally much more limited for such people than is access to de facto brand representation through graphical presentation. If it's a differential comparison vs. tech then that differential should be treated as its own issue, not an issue of design guidelines deserving a label like pedantry just because something else isn't as well-planned or documented.

WorldMaker 3y ago

It is generally different roles of people working on design guides like this versus working on documenting an API or other "basic functionality". It's not necessarily a zero sum effort (and probably often is entirely not) to produce design guides and work on other technical requirements at the same time. Also, design, including and sometimes especially typography, is accessibility and is often worth that sort of attention to detail for exactly that reason, keeping designs accessible to all users. Defining contrasts and visual hierarchy hugely influences how accessible something using a design might be. One specific example I see is the callout in this particular example for using much less UPPERCASE text moving forward from whatever their previous design language was. This is something I know that I've fought designers I've worked with over as an accessibility problem they've missed. (It's also something that Microsoft went through a huge accidental blow up in very public with early "Metro" designs that they had to apologize for and then walk back in consequent "Fluent" designs.) In general people read word shapes more than individual letters, uppercase forms a lot of very similar looking "rectangles" and even for readers with no other obvious dyslexia uppercase words are the visual equivalent of "speed bumps" in a roadway. They slow reading, sometimes to a crawl, and generally just get in the way, for all readers. (For dyslexic readers I've known they sometimes are even more "walls" than simply "speed bumps" and text entirely in uppercase will completely upset them, if not make the content 100% inaccessible to them and they will nope out entirely.) That's an important thing about typography that is easy to miss. I've seen so many designs use all uppercase text in places simply because it "looks nice" (those "all words create about the same sort of rectangular shape" that makes a dyslexic viewpoint absolutely hate seeing all uppercase text add a regularity and "cleanliness" to design shapes that some designers find they love; one person's massive accessibility bug is another's aesthetic feature).

at-fates-hands 3y ago

>> I am fascinated by typography and page design and enjoy reading about it You should check out the Netflix series: Abstract: The Art of Design Episode: Jonathan Hoefler: Typeface Design The guy has some of the most important typefaces. The episode does an amazing job detailing his career and how they develop new typefaces. His work is literally everywhere and its super fascinating some of the misconceptions about type.

chrstphrknwtn 3y ago
Also check out Tobias Frere-Jones [1], Johnathon Hoefler's partner who was allegedly screwed out his share of their partnership. [2] 1. https://frerejones.com https://frerejones.com 2. https://nymag.com/news/features/jonathan-hoefler-tobias-frere-jones-2014-6/ https://nymag.com/news/features/jonathan-hoefler-tobias-frer...

jw1224 3y ago

> CONTRIBUTING.md

makeitdouble 3y ago

From the website running and dev side, I'd argue time spent on typography and page design guidelines have super high ROI. First, it's basically one shot: once you have a type face and yhe guideline, only small tweaks are needed down the line. Changing it willy nilly has too much impact that it's just not an option either way. So you better spend time having it right. Then it will be referred to in millions of places. Every single site made by the Swedish government will have to look at this guideline and decide where to use Sweden sans and when to use Noto. For their own project it wil be a small decision, but in aggregate the better the guideline is the lesser time needs to be spent bikeshedding on which font to use and if Times New Roman is acceptable.

wildpeaks 3y ago

Craftmanship is its own reward (and a lot of Web 1.0 websites were this kind of passionate people sharing their niche knowledge).

hoosieree 3y ago

Fractionated coconut oil or gtfo.

mediascreen 3y ago

Well, this is is not guidelines for an app or a website. This is guidelines for how the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Enterprise and Innovation, the Ministry of Culture, the Swedish Institute, Business Sweden and Visit Sweden and the different agencies they use, should use typography when representing Sweden abroad. I don't think the type section is unusually large, but I worked at a company for two years that exclusively made design manuals, and the well made ones tend to look like this.

makstaks 3y ago

The documentation is pretty standard, it allows users of this typeface to build out a design system that scales.

Someone 3y ago

The amount of documentation and attention to detail spent on code layout and API design (example: whether array sizes should be signed to unsigned integers, whether to use (start, length) or (start, end) to specify ranges) is often off the charts, too, and those are things the users will never see. As in those cases, the investment in these kinds of guidelines should be worth it because less time gets spent on such discussions later and consistency of products is improved.