3 ms·

I think some fonts do this so that they have a distinguishing feature. Fonts seem to be a very saturated market, so this might help being noticed in a crowd of

I think some fonts do this so that they have a distinguishing feature. Fonts seem to be a very saturated market, so this might help being noticed in a crowd of sameness and copycats, and many people don't look at a font otherwise either, even people who use them in designs. I think the sticking out part is supposed to irritate somewhat, but it still needs to make some sense, like a hot take. I noticed some online personalities use the same strategy with pronunciation, consciously and consistently mispronouncing specific words, play up their accent. Media analysts also recognize verbal tics as a trope, for similar effect. Back to fonts, another site that I remember using a similar thing is the Genius lyrics site. For a long time, while establishing their presence, they used the square character forms from the Programme font, which you can see on my link. They still use Programme, but use the normal forms for some time now though, presumably, because it was indeed irritating, and it hurt legibility. https://www.typewolf.com/programme https://www.typewolf.com/programme

pessimizer 2y ago
If you can't compete on quality, you compete by being difficult to compare to better things.
- npteljes 2y ago
  I think this is too cynical to be true. I brought up saturation and uncare of primary users (designers) specifically to address that quality is not enough. You put your heart and 1000 person-hours into a lovely font, but many will still opt for whatever ships with their OS or design tool. Quality is simply not enough, and sometimes don't even enter the picture, very similarly to creative work - for a musician, talent itself does nothing. Same for well-written code for software engineers - nobody cares, maybe only themselves in the future. Software achieving business goals, and being well written, or by brilliant people are two different things, with very weak correlation. Usually the recipe for success includes good quality / talent, sure. But it also usually includes something that is markedly different from others. People, searching for this distinct something, can seem tryhard, or just throwing sh!t at the wall, to see what sticks - and maybe they are - but they are also doing something that's an organic part of the road to success. For a font-related example, that might be easier on the eyes, could be Fira Code. One of the immediate distinguishers is the ligatures. Check it out if you haven't already, it's quite neat, and it was the talk of the town for quite some time.

pessimizer 2y ago

If you can't compete on quality, you compete by being difficult to compare to better things.

npteljes 2y ago
I think this is too cynical to be true. I brought up saturation and uncare of primary users (designers) specifically to address that quality is not enough. You put your heart and 1000 person-hours into a lovely font, but many will still opt for whatever ships with their OS or design tool. Quality is simply not enough, and sometimes don't even enter the picture, very similarly to creative work - for a musician, talent itself does nothing. Same for well-written code for software engineers - nobody cares, maybe only themselves in the future. Software achieving business goals, and being well written, or by brilliant people are two different things, with very weak correlation. Usually the recipe for success includes good quality / talent, sure. But it also usually includes something that is markedly different from others. People, searching for this distinct something, can seem tryhard, or just throwing sh!t at the wall, to see what sticks - and maybe they are - but they are also doing something that's an organic part of the road to success. For a font-related example, that might be easier on the eyes, could be Fira Code. One of the immediate distinguishers is the ligatures. Check it out if you haven't already, it's quite neat, and it was the talk of the town for quite some time.