10 ms·

A wide variety of people in the real world -- designers, brand designers, accessibility designers, book publishers, teachers, avid readers -- absolutely care ab

A wide variety of people in the real world -- designers, brand designers, accessibility designers, book publishers, teachers, avid readers -- absolutely care about this. I am often surprised by how much considered opinion non-professionals have about font choices, about readability etc. The site we're on: I don't think we are going to agree that this is the real world... ;-) (Ask anyone with dyslexia about typefaces and they can tell you a lot about what they like and don't like. Tell them about typefaces designed with dyslexia in mind and they may love you forever. I totally changed someone's life by introducing her to OpenDyslexic.)

tptacek 3y ago
So: professional font nerds care. And there are pathologically bad choices to make that make pages unreadable to people with reading difficulties. I think my argument admits both of those amendments without really bending all that much.
- bemusedthrow75 3y ago
  > So: professional font nerds care. I think I listed a broad enough constituency to rebut that claim. But I would agree that bad font choices (as well as bad colour contrasts) are a significant downside of all the flexibility.
  - tptacek 3y ago
    Just because this is fun: "designers, brand designers, accessibility designers, book publishers" are all professional font nerds. Teachers and "avid readers" might not be, but I dispute that either of those groups cares as much about font selection as font nerds wish they did.
thereisnojesus 3y ago
You sound like an artist and not a professional designer.
- bemusedthrow75 3y ago
  I don't know what this means. Are you saying professional designers don't care about this stuff? I'm a developer with front-end skills; I've spent a lot of time around professional designers for 27 years and I usually implement people's style guides. (I'm also a photographer, which should disqualify me from claiming to be an artist)

tptacek 3y ago

So: professional font nerds care. And there are pathologically bad choices to make that make pages unreadable to people with reading difficulties. I think my argument admits both of those amendments without really bending all that much.

bemusedthrow75 3y ago
> So: professional font nerds care. I think I listed a broad enough constituency to rebut that claim. But I would agree that bad font choices (as well as bad colour contrasts) are a significant downside of all the flexibility.
- tptacek 3y ago
  Just because this is fun: "designers, brand designers, accessibility designers, book publishers" are all professional font nerds. Teachers and "avid readers" might not be, but I dispute that either of those groups cares as much about font selection as font nerds wish they did.

thereisnojesus 3y ago

You sound like an artist and not a professional designer.

bemusedthrow75 3y ago
I don't know what this means. Are you saying professional designers don't care about this stuff? I'm a developer with front-end skills; I've spent a lot of time around professional designers for 27 years and I usually implement people's style guides. (I'm also a photographer, which should disqualify me from claiming to be an artist)