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Butterick’s Practical Typography 2º Edition

practicaltypography.com

31–40 of 54 posts

Re: Butterick’s Practical Typography 2º Edition

#32

"For instance, please don’t adopt the slogan “A Design Firm Unlike Any Other” and then set it in Helvetica." I feel vindicated. Helvetica might have been cool when it was invented in the 50s, but nowadays it's the most overused and overrated font around. I dislike it with a passion.

Maybe Inter will become the new Helvetica ;)

Re: Butterick’s Practical Typography 2º Edition

#33
Another fun aspect of non-breaking[1] and other less common spaces that I’ve realized recently…

If you’re ever trying to use a short or previously-used username: many signups will strip out a regular space, but they won’t always catch a ZERO WIDTH SPACE or HAIRLINE SPACE or many of the other options[2]. It usually takes a few tries, but eventually one will get through.

1. https://practicaltypography.com/nonbreaking-spaces.html

2. https://jkorpela.fi/chars/spaces.html

Re: Butterick’s Practical Typography 2º Edition

#34
post #28

It seems Valkyrie is again the default font, which is great. With it, the site is the most beautiful thing on the whole web, every interval and spacing on it being just right—or at least having been so in the first edition, as I'm not yet seeing what's different now. I'm repeatedly consumed with envy at the author, not so far able to achieve such perfection myself.

Actually, the site is set in Equity, but there is an option at the bottom to set it to Valkyrie :)

Re: Butterick’s Practical Typography 2º Edition

#35

Hmm, a site about typography that has an odd layout: https://freeimage.host/i/bu.qrwce2 The logo overlaps all the content. Is this deliberate?

A fellow Firefox user?

I was wondering the same thing. Then it hit me: maybe it's just yet another one of those sites that assume all browsers in the world are Chromium and that's why the layout is garbled up for me.

This is what it looks like with Chromium on my end: https://i.imgur.com/36Lacgd.png

Re: Butterick’s Practical Typography 2º Edition

#36

I spent an evening reading this, it was enjoyable. It was more enjoyable than an "average" pre-covid entertainment I could get for $19. So I sent $19 for the author, all for a very enjoyable evening. My favourites: 1. https://practicaltypography.com/system-fonts.html strong thoughts on Arial font. 2. https://practicaltypography.com/the-cowardice-of-brave.html very strong thoughts on Brave browser. 3. https://practica…

I’ll be honest - I love straightforward no bs criticisms and strong personal opinions. It’s done in a way that’s sort of tongue in cheek humor.

We’re going to lose this aspect of our society as we demand more rigor in arguments and not let people speak their minds. Not everything needs sources and logic. Sometimes something just sucks and people should just say that’s the case. It’s their opinion after all.

Re: Butterick’s Practical Typography 2º Edition

#37

Hmm, a site about typography that has an odd layout: https://freeimage.host/i/bu.qrwce2 The logo overlaps all the content. Is this deliberate?

A fellow Firefox user? I was wondering the same thing. Then it hit me: maybe it's just yet another one of those sites that assume all browsers in the world are Chromium and that's why the layout is garbled up for me. This is what it looks like with Chromium on my end: https://i.imgur.com/36Lacgd.png

Looks fine for me in Firefox.

However it's just a blank page until I enable Javascript. So I'm not all that interested to begin with.

Re: Butterick’s Practical Typography 2º Edition

#38
post #24

I think Matthew is doing great work. I have a lotmof respect for what he does and how he goes about it. I find that many things he says are good ways to make pleasant to read (and legible) documents. But: Please do use Arial. I find it better than about 95% of the choices done by "people that care about typography". Or even better, let other people that care about how their web experience looks chose for themselves.…

> Please do use Arial. I find it better than about 95% of the choices done by "people that care about typography". It may be better than 95% of the choices done by people who try to differentiate by picking a non-default font for the sake of picking a non-default font, which is certainly worse than just keeping the default, but I doubt very much that it is better than even 5% of the choices made by people who care ab…

I am not so sure. Most of the self proclaimed typographers I have met seem to be the kind that spends ages selecting fonts and redesigning their blog or sites without producing any actual content and then whining on people that has content people actually wants to read. Not only is there no content, the little that is available is almost baroque.

I feel sorry for the people who do know what they are talking about because of the people they have to share community with.

Edit:

I come of as something of a prick. I know. In reality I don't really care. I just find that so much time spent making my web experience worse, and it is provoking. Most of what I read is PDFs (preferably printed) typeset using latex in computer modern, and I like it that way.

Re: Butterick’s Practical Typography 2º Edition

#39
post #24

I think Matthew is doing great work. I have a lotmof respect for what he does and how he goes about it. I find that many things he says are good ways to make pleasant to read (and legible) documents. But: Please do use Arial. I find it better than about 95% of the choices done by "people that care about typography". Or even better, let other people that care about how their web experience looks chose for themselves.…

Adopting Arial is at the intersection of several classes of bad web font choices:

  - random, because it ended up being the browser's default sans serif;
  - someone not really interested in typography went through their available fonts, i.e. system fonts and a few random ones, in alphabetical order and "A" offered enough choices for them;
  - "Arial" is a short simple word, and someone was too lazy to check or remember other font names;
  - an amateur designer made a pathetic attempt to reproduce totally inappropriate "Swiss" design, badly, or to be even more inappropriately ironic;
  - "overused" and therefore "fatal to the designer's credibility", in the euphemistic words of the linked article; a designer that doesn't realize that fonts can be overused has less familiarity with typography than the general public and is therefore not a designer.

Re: Butterick’s Practical Typography 2º Edition

#40

Hmm, a site about typography that has an odd layout: https://freeimage.host/i/bu.qrwce2 The logo overlaps all the content. Is this deliberate?

A fellow Firefox user? I was wondering the same thing. Then it hit me: maybe it's just yet another one of those sites that assume all browsers in the world are Chromium and that's why the layout is garbled up for me. This is what it looks like with Chromium on my end: https://i.imgur.com/36Lacgd.png

Firefox user, no problem here. The OP screenshot has different fonts that the page sets, so looks like both of you have web fonts disabled.
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