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Have you considered that you may just have a different taste? To me, the fitted hulu logo looks so much better. I like the crispness.

by hej 14y ago

commieneko 14y ago
Sure, what does YMMV mean? It's not just a matter of taste either. People have widely varying degrees of visual acuity. But emitted imagery is going to ring in areas of detail and high contrast. Reflective imagery, not so much. Sharpness is going to create detail and contrast. If you are going to do this kind of thing, you will have to develop an eye looking at stuff. And then be ready to lose that eye and look at it like a street person again. My point is look at the whole thing, not the pixels. Those corners ring, I want to look at them. We aren't having a beauty contest here. That logo is a single element on a page full of a lot of other stuff. Do we want it ringing? Hell, do we even want the viewer looking at the damn thing. If I ran that circus I'd probably fade the thing to about 50%. Yes it's got to be there. They should notice it, recognize it, but we probably want them looking at something else. It's a rule, a law really, that you never, never, NEVER look at a logo or design in isolation when you are making a judgement. You look at it in its venue. If it's a critical use, you will be fiddling with the design, the whole thing, not just the logo, for each use. This isn't an aim, shoot and forget situation. Edit: I should also point out that when looking critically at a design I use an old visual astronomer's trick: Averted vision. That is to say, I don't look directly at the thing I'm looking at, I look beside it or even a ways off. Your eye isn't a camera. It's a complicated flying spot scanner with a really complicated, variable sensor. Different parts of your eyes "notice" different things. The center is good for detail and color, but the edges are good for contrast and small variations in same. When a viewer looks at a page, his center of vision is looking at those groovy sharp pixels, but the edges are noticing stuff too, like contrast and movement. Just like the caveman who is looking eagerly at the bright red berries on the bush, the edges of his eyes are looking for that tell-tale flicker in the underbrush that means a big mean cat is about to jump on him and eat him. You have to be cognizant what is going on all over the field of view in order to control, or organize the viewer's experience.
- gbog 14y ago
  I find interesting that all what you say applies very well to music (I was a sound engineer before): there is no pure crisp sound, thus add a bit of reverberation (ie blur). Usually just turn the knob until you hear it, then turn it back half way. Defocus your ears to make sure the compressor is not pumping. what you didn't say is that sometime you want an effect, an then you should turn the knob to it's full position.
  - commieneko 14y ago
    The real world is noisy and messy. Our senses are evolved to deal with that. When we sense something not noisy or messy, it really stands out. When I first started working with digital imagery, back in the 1970s, it looked very alien and harsh. Of course a lot of it still does to a certain extent, but we've learned to accept it as a kind of visual language. I would expect that most readers of Hacker News can't remember a time when they weren't surrounded by digital images and sounds.

Have you considered that you may just have a different taste? To me, the fitted hulu logo looks so much better. I like the crispness.

by hej 14y ago

Have you considered that you may just have a different taste? To me, the fitted hulu logo looks so much better. I like the crispness.

commieneko 14y ago

Sure, what does YMMV mean? It's not just a matter of taste either. People have widely varying degrees of visual acuity. But emitted imagery is going to ring in areas of detail and high contrast. Reflective imagery, not so much. Sharpness is going to create detail and contrast. If you are going to do this kind of thing, you will have to develop an eye looking at stuff. And then be ready to lose that eye and look at it like a street person again. My point is look at the whole thing, not the pixels. Those corners ring, I want to look at them. We aren't having a beauty contest here. That logo is a single element on a page full of a lot of other stuff. Do we want it ringing? Hell, do we even want the viewer looking at the damn thing. If I ran that circus I'd probably fade the thing to about 50%. Yes it's got to be there. They should notice it, recognize it, but we probably want them looking at something else. It's a rule, a law really, that you never, never, NEVER look at a logo or design in isolation when you are making a judgement. You look at it in its venue. If it's a critical use, you will be fiddling with the design, the whole thing, not just the logo, for each use. This isn't an aim, shoot and forget situation. Edit: I should also point out that when looking critically at a design I use an old visual astronomer's trick: Averted vision. That is to say, I don't look directly at the thing I'm looking at, I look beside it or even a ways off. Your eye isn't a camera. It's a complicated flying spot scanner with a really complicated, variable sensor. Different parts of your eyes "notice" different things. The center is good for detail and color, but the edges are good for contrast and small variations in same. When a viewer looks at a page, his center of vision is looking at those groovy sharp pixels, but the edges are noticing stuff too, like contrast and movement. Just like the caveman who is looking eagerly at the bright red berries on the bush, the edges of his eyes are looking for that tell-tale flicker in the underbrush that means a big mean cat is about to jump on him and eat him. You have to be cognizant what is going on all over the field of view in order to control, or organize the viewer's experience.

gbog 14y ago
I find interesting that all what you say applies very well to music (I was a sound engineer before): there is no pure crisp sound, thus add a bit of reverberation (ie blur). Usually just turn the knob until you hear it, then turn it back half way. Defocus your ears to make sure the compressor is not pumping. what you didn't say is that sometime you want an effect, an then you should turn the knob to it's full position.
- commieneko 14y ago
  The real world is noisy and messy. Our senses are evolved to deal with that. When we sense something not noisy or messy, it really stands out. When I first started working with digital imagery, back in the 1970s, it looked very alien and harsh. Of course a lot of it still does to a certain extent, but we've learned to accept it as a kind of visual language. I would expect that most readers of Hacker News can't remember a time when they weren't surrounded by digital images and sounds.