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Is it just my MacBook Air + OS X, or is the Font (ironically) on that site painful to read? Compare: https://medium.com/@willgossin/the-uncanny-valley-race-mer

Is it just my MacBook Air + OS X, or is the Font (ironically) on that site painful to read? Compare: https://medium.com/@willgossin/the-uncanny-valley-race-meritocracy-in-tech-4500a2b302b1 https://medium.com/@willgossin/the-uncanny-valley-race-merit... To: http://practicaltypography.com/billionaires-typewriter.html http://practicaltypography.com/billionaires-typewriter.html [Edit: Also - no HTTPS? And No Favicon?]

joshuapants 12y ago
No, you're right. The site has always looked poor to me across platforms.
MBlume 12y ago
I wound up reading the piece in Instapaper. To say this undermined the author's point would be an understatement...
- mazelife 12y ago
  Does it? I don't see where he's making the claim that the reason you should listen to him is because he is a better designer than the folks at Medium. In fact, he says "[m]edium’s homogeneous design works and reads well." The claim he's actually making seems to be about issues of openness, ownership, and authorial compensation, specifically that users are trading those things away for the fit and polish of medium's platform. Unrelated, maybe it's a platform-specific problem? I found his site to be quite readable. Things like line-height and line-length appear to have been chosen with care, and he takes great pains to get all the typographical details right. The use of a "◇" to indicate links is...eccentric, but whatever.
mapleoin 12y ago
Not sure which you mean. I have a 3200x1800 13" display + Firefox and the practicaltypography font looks amazing. I basically had to read the whole article just because of the joy of the typography. Medium looks washed out in comparison.
- ghshephard 12y ago
  That answers my question then - on the 1440x900 13" MBAir, the black lettering from Practical Typography is jarring, and unpleasant to read for long periods of time for me, but Medium flows very well - and I read tons of material on their site. PT is just very unwelcoming for me to read - both the diamonds all over the place (which reminds me of the PCL printout when you didn't have the correct font installed), and the assault on my eyes. Perhaps on a higher-resolution retina display it works out better (and perhaps Medium suffers somewhat in comparison)
  - mintplant 12y ago
    I'm on a few-years-old Lenovo laptop with an ordinary 1366x768 display, and it looks fine to me. What browser are you using? Can you take a screenshot?
    - raihansaputra 12y ago
      I'm on MacBook Air too and it does look weird. I'm browsing on Google Chrome. Here's the screenshot: http://imgur.com/jI4bqd9 http://imgur.com/jI4bqd9
- logicallee 12y ago
  > basically had to read the whole article just because of the joy of the typography I second this sentiment! He's a much better typographer than he is an author. An early paragraph reads, in full, "So, a few words about that." I also disagreed with all his points (e.g. I'd love to just type text as I'm doing into this comment field here with almost no formatting input choices, and get an article like his.) What he would call "eating out of the peanut butter jar". The way he ended his essay was weak and not convincing. (I don't want to make money off of my writing directly.) But the typesetting on his byline. Wow. I was blown away by the typography and found it an absolute pleasure to read. I'd love to have my writing typeset as well. I read through his whole essay despite not agreeing with much (any) of the content.
rev_bird 12y ago
I'm on a MBP with OS X, and I was almost distracted by how much I liked the design of the page. The way links worked (on desktop, at least) was really interesting, even though it seems so obvious once it's done.
akent 12y ago
For me the end-of-line word hyphenation also detracts from the readability.
desdiv 12y ago
Might be the font. He's using his own propriety font: http://practicaltypography.com/equity.html http://practicaltypography.com/equity.html
shiftpgdn 12y ago
Uhg yes. I couldn't even finish the article because the site was so difficult to get through.
sanderjd 12y ago
I read the whole book recently (almost obsessively) and I think the font is great. I don't think there's some technical thing going on, I think you (and other commenters here) just don't like the font, which is your prerogative of course.
marssaxman 12y ago
The font is way too big in both cases, but aside from the former's weird slidy header effect and the latter's weird diamond link effect, they both seem comparably pretentious.
MichaelGG 12y ago
FireFox on Win10 and the article's font is not-that-fantastic. But Medium's font rendering in FF is really quite terrible: http://imgur.com/nvQFscE http://imgur.com/nvQFscE

joshuapants 12y ago

No, you're right. The site has always looked poor to me across platforms.

MBlume 12y ago

I wound up reading the piece in Instapaper. To say this undermined the author's point would be an understatement...

mazelife 12y ago
Does it? I don't see where he's making the claim that the reason you should listen to him is because he is a better designer than the folks at Medium. In fact, he says "[m]edium’s homogeneous design works and reads well." The claim he's actually making seems to be about issues of openness, ownership, and authorial compensation, specifically that users are trading those things away for the fit and polish of medium's platform. Unrelated, maybe it's a platform-specific problem? I found his site to be quite readable. Things like line-height and line-length appear to have been chosen with care, and he takes great pains to get all the typographical details right. The use of a "◇" to indicate links is...eccentric, but whatever.

mapleoin 12y ago

Not sure which you mean. I have a 3200x1800 13" display + Firefox and the practicaltypography font looks amazing. I basically had to read the whole article just because of the joy of the typography. Medium looks washed out in comparison.

ghshephard 12y ago
That answers my question then - on the 1440x900 13" MBAir, the black lettering from Practical Typography is jarring, and unpleasant to read for long periods of time for me, but Medium flows very well - and I read tons of material on their site. PT is just very unwelcoming for me to read - both the diamonds all over the place (which reminds me of the PCL printout when you didn't have the correct font installed), and the assault on my eyes. Perhaps on a higher-resolution retina display it works out better (and perhaps Medium suffers somewhat in comparison)
- mintplant 12y ago
  I'm on a few-years-old Lenovo laptop with an ordinary 1366x768 display, and it looks fine to me. What browser are you using? Can you take a screenshot?
  - raihansaputra 12y ago
    I'm on MacBook Air too and it does look weird. I'm browsing on Google Chrome. Here's the screenshot: http://imgur.com/jI4bqd9 http://imgur.com/jI4bqd9
logicallee 12y ago
> basically had to read the whole article just because of the joy of the typography I second this sentiment! He's a much better typographer than he is an author. An early paragraph reads, in full, "So, a few words about that." I also disagreed with all his points (e.g. I'd love to just type text as I'm doing into this comment field here with almost no formatting input choices, and get an article like his.) What he would call "eating out of the peanut butter jar". The way he ended his essay was weak and not convincing. (I don't want to make money off of my writing directly.) But the typesetting on his byline. Wow. I was blown away by the typography and found it an absolute pleasure to read. I'd love to have my writing typeset as well. I read through his whole essay despite not agreeing with much (any) of the content.

rev_bird 12y ago

I'm on a MBP with OS X, and I was almost distracted by how much I liked the design of the page. The way links worked (on desktop, at least) was really interesting, even though it seems so obvious once it's done.

akent 12y ago

For me the end-of-line word hyphenation also detracts from the readability.

desdiv 12y ago

Might be the font. He's using his own propriety font: http://practicaltypography.com/equity.html http://practicaltypography.com/equity.html

shiftpgdn 12y ago

Uhg yes. I couldn't even finish the article because the site was so difficult to get through.

sanderjd 12y ago

I read the whole book recently (almost obsessively) and I think the font is great. I don't think there's some technical thing going on, I think you (and other commenters here) just don't like the font, which is your prerogative of course.

marssaxman 12y ago

The font is way too big in both cases, but aside from the former's weird slidy header effect and the latter's weird diamond link effect, they both seem comparably pretentious.

MichaelGG 12y ago

FireFox on Win10 and the article's font is not-that-fantastic. But Medium's font rendering in FF is really quite terrible: http://imgur.com/nvQFscE http://imgur.com/nvQFscE