> Oops!
> Bold, Medium, Text, Extralight and Thin should not be used in websites.
Why not?
IBM Type
41–50 of 130 posts
Re: IBM Type
#42Great page, it only took 13s to load. With no wonder when it takes 13.8 MB. And the biggest png files are not even pngcrushed... du -ch editorial-1.png editorial-3.png product-1.png product- 2.png product-3.png product-4.png 2,5M editorial-1.png 832K editorial-3.png 368K product-1.png 288K product-2.png 284K product-3.png 1,2M product-4.png 5,4M total vs pngcrushed: du -ch editorial-1.smaller.png editorial-3.smaller.…
> And the biggest png files are not even pngcrushed... Makes sense (that they are not) if the difference is just ~20% as in here.
In nearly every subfield of computing, along nearly every metric, most people would kill for a 20% improvement.
A processor 20% faster would dominate the market for years. A new compression algorithm that was 20% smaller would be either copied or used by every archiving system. And yes, a website reduced by 20% is significant.
Re: IBM Type
#43> Oops! > Bold, Medium, Text, Extralight and Thin should not be used in websites. Why not?
Because a committee at IBM said so.
That said, the Bold is very, very heavy, and the Thin is very, very light. But I see nothing wrong with the Sans in Medium (taking the place of bold, usually), the Text (it's not bad) and the Extralight (if you really need that, which you probably don't.)
I also see that they banned #0 black text, presumably because they are elite. That's why all my browsers have Reader extensions now.
Re: IBM Type
#44> Oops! > Bold, Medium, Text, Extralight and Thin should not be used in websites. Why not?
Legibility? Just speculating, but websites get used in more diverse ways than most media; books do not need to look good across every screen size from 3 to 300 inches. So it's probably wiser to be more conservative.
Re: IBM Type
#45I love the attention to detail in the document, lots of thought has clearly been given to legibility and structure. It's a great read regardless of which font you ultimately use.
I do question the 75 characters per line, though - is it just me or can that be a tad too short for body text if a larger font size set the width somewhere?
Also, on a funny note: the very last image of the page shows a sample of IBM Plex Mono... And uses "fancy" ldquo/rdquo in code. Clearly not enough developers were consulted in drafting this document!
Re: IBM Type
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
I kept reading thinking it must be more than a font, but nope. Just a font. A nice font.
it's a font and a design language. These documents are very useful when trying to teach 100,000+ people how to properly use a font
it's very IBM, the UI mock ups in particular looked very usable, no one would be fired for using this font...
Re: IBM Type
#47> Oops! > Bold, Medium, Text, Extralight and Thin should not be used in websites. Why not?
I can't answer for the heavier weights, but lighter font weights can look dreadful on low PPI displays (e.g, desktop computers).
Re: IBM Type
#48Great page, it only took 13s to load. With no wonder when it takes 13.8 MB. And the biggest png files are not even pngcrushed... du -ch editorial-1.png editorial-3.png product-1.png product- 2.png product-3.png product-4.png 2,5M editorial-1.png 832K editorial-3.png 368K product-1.png 288K product-2.png 284K product-3.png 1,2M product-4.png 5,4M total vs pngcrushed: du -ch editorial-1.smaller.png editorial-3.smaller.…
It also looked messed up on mobile - the nav bar took up 20% of the screen. Definitely a point in favour of the motherfuckingwebsite.com school of thought.
I remember websites. I miss them dearly.
Re: IBM Type
#49Aaw, I guess this means IBM PDF manuals will lose their distinctive look. "IBM-Bodoni" font I guess for the title? https://www-304.ibm.com/servers/resourcelink/svc00100.nsf/pa...
I can see echoes of Bodoni in IBM Plex Serif. Bodoni looks way classier though, and imho doesn't look dated at all.
Re: IBM Type
#50What's the license? Is this purely an internal IBM font?