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

practicaltypography.com

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

#121

Post by gjm11 »

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.

(Obviously "sans serif" should say "serif".)

I suggest that on any occasion when you're inclined to use Palatino for substantial quantities of text (as opposed to titles, posters, book covers, etc.) you would do better to use Aldus instead.

(Aldus is a companion face to Palatino; Zapf's intention was that Palatino is for "display" use -- titles, posters, etc. -- and Aldus is for body-text.)

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

#122

Post by logicprog »

enriquto wrote: post #115
logicprog wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Regarding [1], you can simplify it even further by ditching jekyll altogether and writing the html directly.

That's true, but then I'd have to manually list posts, do forward and back buttons, and when I'm writing the articles do all kinds of boiler plate. Plus, markdown is much nicer than Html to write in.

On top of that, Jekyll doesn't add any weight for the client.

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

#123

Post by ken »

juped wrote: post #83
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…

If you're upset by Butterick linking to his own font then you're not "all for artists promoting their work". This is ridiculous. Is he supposed to pretend he doesn't make fonts in his book about typography?

It’s a good thing I’m not upset by it, then.

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

#124

Post by enriquto »

logicprog wrote: post #122
enriquto wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding [1], you can simplify it even further by ditching jekyll altogether and writing the html directly.

That's true, but then I'd have to manually list posts, do forward and back buttons, and when I'm writing the articles do all kinds of boiler plate. Plus, markdown is much nicer than Html to write in. On top of that, Jekyll doesn't add any weight for the client.

I don't know... I've been bitten three times by jekyll updates breaking my site in the worst moment. Thus I replaced it by a makefile that concatenates the appropriate html headers into the stuff I write. Couldn't be happier/more relaxed.

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

#125

Post by logicprog »

enriquto wrote: post #124
logicprog wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true, but then I'd have to manually list posts, do forward and back buttons, and when I'm writing the articles do all kinds of boiler plate. Plus, markdown is much nicer than Html to write in. On top of that, Jekyll doesn't add any weight for the client.

I don't know... I've been bitten three times by jekyll updates breaking my site in the worst moment. Thus I replaced it by a makefile that concatenates the appropriate html headers into the stuff I write. Couldn't be happier/more relaxed.

I have a friend that wants to use Makefiles as a build system for his website, C macros as the templating engine for the HTML, and a JS->C library so his WebAssembly C can access the DOM. Hence, he wants to write his web apps in C lol!

Sorry, the mentioning of Makefiles brought that back. In any case, you might be right, but it's a very simple website and Jekyll is easier. I'll cross the bridge of incompatibility when I come to it. Thanks for the heads up though!

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

#126

Post by gjm11 »

smcl wrote: post #110
pavlov wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO the default for body text should be serif, with sans used for headlines and display text. There’s a reason books and magazines are set in serif fonts: they are easier to read for long text paragraphs. GUIs defaulted to sans serif fonts because displays didn’t have enough resolution to properly render serifs, but that’s mostly not the case anymore.

Quick question - "body text" and "headlines" are clear to me but what is "display text"?

Pretty much anything that isn't body text. Headings. Words on posters. Book covers and spines. Advertisements (unless they're very wordy ones). Street signs.

Of course these don't all want the same sort of treatment, but they have some features in common: you're not going to be reading a lot of whatever-it-is at one go, and there probably aren't going to be multiple lines of text. So you don't care so much about things like how comfortable it is to read in bulk or whether blocks of text look good in overall shape/density, and being quirky or distractingly eye-catching might be a feature rather than a bug.

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

#128

Post by tmcw »

jakear wrote: post #35
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…

Those (almost) all do reasonably well where most “minimalist” sites fail, accessibility. Many developers seem to get a kick out of “not caring about design”, as some sort of point of pride, but at the same time put in just enough CSS to screw over the visually-disabled. HN, for instance, can’t be zoomed in iOS. Also, the above macwright cuts off the titles to make room for the Dates, so to me the site looks like: Rec…

Thanks for identifying that issue. I'll try to find a solution for folks who are using iOS + increased font sizes. It's going to be a little tricky, so if anyone has found a solution let me know - I haven't been able to find a way to reliably detect text size adjustments on iOS and the truncation behavior is desired at smaller font sizes. Definitely will try and find a way to make it work.

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

#129

Post by enriquto »

logicprog wrote: post #125
enriquto wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know... I've been bitten three times by jekyll updates breaking my site in the worst moment. Thus I replaced it by a makefile that concatenates the appropriate html headers into the stuff I write. Couldn't be happier/more relaxed.

I have a friend that wants to use Makefiles as a build system for his website, C macros as the templating engine for the HTML, and a JS->C library so his WebAssembly C can access the DOM. Hence, he wants to write his web apps in C lol! Sorry, the mentioning of Makefiles brought that back. In any case, you might be right, but it's a very simple website and Jekyll is easier. I'll cross the bridge of incompatibility whe…

> C macros as the templating engine for the HTML, and a JS->C library so his WebAssembly C can access the DOM. Hence, he wants to write his web apps in C lol!

Websites in C are alright, but this sounds like a crazy setup.

In my case, there is no C and the makefile does only "cat header.html $^ footer.html > $@"

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

#130

Post by michaelcampbell »

jeffmcmahan wrote: post #86

First, as a type nerd, I don't agree that Times is a bad font or that it signals "apathy." When I see nice kerning, judicious leading and tracking in a book design or webpage using a Times font - particularly LaTeX documents using TeX Gyre Termes - I'm generally very pleased. Second, Plantin is not a "Times alternative," it is a variation on Bembo. Bembo is the opposite of Times ... it is e x p a n s i v e. It's like…

I'm torn now between Termes and Pagella.
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