Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Times New Roman alternatives: You can do better (2013)

practicaltypography.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 146 posts

Re: Times New Roman alternatives: You can do better (2013)

#51

Post by airstrike »

ken wrote: post #40

He lists only three 'flaws' with Times New Roman. The first is: > It was created for a newspaper, so it’s a bit narrower than most text fonts yet all the alternatives are almost exactly the same width. Plantin is even a bit narrower. How do they "avoid its shortcomings"? The second flaw is "italic is mediocre", which I'm not in a position to judge. The third (and main) complaint is "it connotes apathy", and one of th…

An ad coupled with some pretty shoddy arguments against a font that is extremely legible. I like typography as much as the next geek, but I have purposefully chosen Times New Roman many times in the past because it is so damn easy on the eyes.

Re: Times New Roman alternatives: You can do better (2013)

#52

Post by sho_hn »

logicprog wrote: post #41
mtm7 wrote: post #23

I love a good font (and try to use one on my own blog), but part of me gets really giddy when I discover a site with very little styling. It's like I've found some secret oasis that's going to have a high signal-to-noise ratio, or at least some more "raw" writing than you'd find on ${popularNewsWebsite}. Some sites that come to mind: - https://danluu.com/ - https://100r.co/site/home.html - https://meagher.co/ - https…

I agree with you on the formatting of blogs. For my new philosophy blog[1] I went for hyper-minimal HTML and CSS, statically rendered with Jekyll, no JS at all. As part of that, I had to select a really nice font, since that's basically the only actual styling on the site, so I went for Literara[2], which I recently discovered and am totally enamored with. Besides Bookerly (I have a Kindle), Literata is the hands-dow…

Literata was commissioned by Google as the new default font in Play Books, btw.

Re: Times New Roman alternatives: You can do better (2013)

#53

Post by gindely »

dsr_ wrote: post #10

For long-form text, my eyes are now persuaded that only TeX Gyre Pagella and very close relatives -- Palatino, Palladio -- will do. Luckily I can usually arrange for that.

I used to share that thought, and I have a font that hangs around called Modded Palatinx that contains a few improvements from the days when it was more important to me that my system be right, than that it be compatible. But nowadays, it looks a bit weak compared to other serifs - more of an acknowledgement of serifs without their meat. It's possible that hi res screens has made me think differently. I'm not sure.

(But in any case, the standard Computer Modern Roman is not my cup of tea. I like more rounded fonts, but its serifs are too strong and dominate the shape.)

Re: Times New Roman alternatives: You can do better (2013)

#56

Post by gindely »

tln wrote: post #9
Jonnax wrote: post #2

Honestly speaking for myself I think roboto and Calibri are excellent fonts. Readable and aesthetically pleasing, what's the general opinion on these default fonts in the typography world?

They are excellent fonts. Neither is default across platforms though, nor are they serif fonts... For a sans serif, default font, I like Palatino. Classic, nice open counters.

Palatino is serif?

Re: Times New Roman alternatives: You can do better (2013)

#58

Post by paxys »

ken wrote: post #40

He lists only three 'flaws' with Times New Roman. The first is: > It was created for a newspaper, so it’s a bit narrower than most text fonts yet all the alternatives are almost exactly the same width. Plantin is even a bit narrower. How do they "avoid its shortcomings"? The second flaw is "italic is mediocre", which I'm not in a position to judge. The third (and main) complaint is "it connotes apathy", and one of th…

How are they the same width? It's pretty clear just from a quick look that every character in Equity is much wider than the corresponding one in Times New Roman.

Re: Times New Roman alternatives: You can do better (2013)

#59

Post by mark-r »

technothrasher wrote: post #31
mrob wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think there's anything inherently more legible about either serif or sans-serif fonts. Whichever one you read the most will be most legible to you, which means the default shouldn't be changed even when it's no longer technically necessary.

Common wisdom is that serif fonts are easier to read, but most research I've read on the topic show either very small or no readability increase with serif over san-serif fonts. As an example: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4612630/

The studies that show an advantage for serif fonts are old, and were done with printed samples. I doubt their conclusions apply to the screen.

Re: Times New Roman alternatives: You can do better (2013)

#60

Post by mark-r »

gindely wrote: post #56
tln wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are excellent fonts. Neither is default across platforms though, nor are they serif fonts... For a sans serif, default font, I like Palatino. Classic, nice open counters.

Palatino is serif?

Very much serif. I believe Apple used it as their corporate font back in the 1980's.
Post reply on HN