Live data from Hacker News

Web Design is 95% Typography

informationarchitects.net

61–70 of 87 posts

Re: Web Design is 95% Typography

#61
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Me too (Ubuntu + Chromium), and is really annoying, as more and more sites are starting to use webfonts :( The strange thing is that only happens around links and on Chromiun (Chrome works ok)

I think the bug was maybe fixed (I haven't seen it in a while), but Ubuntu ships an ancient version of Chrome (looks like Chrome 18, while I'm using Chrome 23).

Yep. Get it from Google (Chrome) not Ubuntu (Chromium).

Re: Web Design is 95% Typography

#62
post #47
post #7

Comically, here's how this is rendering for me using Chromium on Ubuntu: https://s3.amazonaws.com/1overBlog/screenshots/treat-text-as...

Chrome on Linux is a treated as a third class citizen by Chrome developers and it has a crap text layout engine.

At least the font rendering works better on Linux than on Windows.

http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=137692

Re: Web Design is 95% Typography

#63
well maybe, but then one should make a distinction between web application, and just plain websites. designing one may be 95% typography, but the other is about much, much more.

Re: Web Design is 95% Typography

#64
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Me too (Ubuntu + Chromium), and is really annoying, as more and more sites are starting to use webfonts :( The strange thing is that only happens around links and on Chromiun (Chrome works ok)

I think the bug was maybe fixed (I haven't seen it in a while), but Ubuntu ships an ancient version of Chrome (looks like Chrome 18, while I'm using Chrome 23).

I get it from some ppa with newer chromiums, and now that you mention it, I can't recall seeing it in a while. Hope it's fixed!

Re: Web Design is 95% Typography

#65
post #14

That website is impossible to get a quick overview on for me. Those centered lines looked like "thoughts" at first but it seems they are subheadlines? The whitespace feels all weird to me. The text is very huge and uncomfortable. The content itself is badly written (and to me, liking reading something is important. Surely the author's name is "Oliver Reichenstein" not "oliver reichenstein" as the font looks like. Ran…

Regarding the type being large, iA have very good reasons for that being the case, which they outline very clearly in another article [1]. [1] http://informationarchitects.net/blog/100e2r/ "The 100% Easy-2-Read Standard"

I love that article.

>an overly strong contrast (full black and white) is not ideal either, as the text starts to flicker. Benchmark: #333 on #fff

I prefer #000 on #ffd, but that's me.

Re: Web Design is 95% Typography

#66

> 95% of the information on the web is written language. Really? Youtube videos, Facebook photos, TV shows, movies, music, etc only 5%? To be expected from a company that sells a text editor that's 95% typography.

content ≠ information.

Youtube videos are often almost empty of information.

Re: Web Design is 95% Typography

#68
"Choosing a typeface is not typography" I really appreciated this point.

Too often people confuse knowledge of fonts with typographic knowledge or skill. Understanding how to set type is far more important; correctly choosing a good measure (line length), margins, leading (line-spacing), and a meaningful hierarchy of font sizes (among other things) all have a huge effect on readability.

For anyone interested in learning more about typesetting, I recommend "The Elements of Typographic Style" by Robert Bringhurst.

Re: Web Design is 95% Typography

#69
post #18

Web design is 95% typography and 100% content. I can't tell you how many times we have to design without knowing the actual CONTENT or text and we're forced to dropping Lorum Ipsum (fake text) in the designs. Not knowing the text stops us from knowing the USER, the target audience, and the entire REASON for the website. Actually knowing the subject, content and text makes the difference between 'nice' and 'functional…

Honestly though, I think we need to take more responsibility in helping shape that copy. I've also had pretty bad experiences when the client had a dedicated writer assigned. My favorite approach is to, whenever copy is missing, go to a competitors site or Wikipedia, and copy/paste. At least you get an approximation, and it helps everybody who looks at the project start responding to and thinking about content. As UX…

On the opposite end of this, no amount of organizing for the impending content by creating fake but ideal character counts (something I've done on nearly every site I've worked on) has led to those constraints actually being followed by the internal staff or external clients I've worked with. This is easily one of the biggest after-the-fact issues/time consumers I deal with in dev because often times, the content isn't finalized even after launch. At the end of the day my experience has been that the content provider would rather the layout be changed to accomodate their copy rather than them going back in and removing a few words they feel are vital/more appropriate for the messaging. Obviously YMMV, but be sure to calculate the effort vs. your understanding of how the business makes decisions or you may be in for some heartbreak.

Re: Web Design is 95% Typography

#70
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, and it will radically change as the web stops being English / Latin alphabet dominated. It will never stop being English/Latin alphabet dominated for the English (Americas, Australians, etc) though. So, it's not like english web designers will see any major change in their work, or english web users...

Well, I suspect we shall see words entering our lexicon from China - every right thinking 人 would agree :-)

Like in a Bladerunner/Neuromancer cross-culture like future. Maybe, maybe.
Post reply on HN