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

Times New American: A Tale of Two Fonts

hsu.cy

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 184 posts

Re: Times New American: A Tale of Two Fonts

#51

Post by WillAdams »

tolerance wrote: post #23

This was a terrific, reasonable take on this “controversy”. I have to admit that the correspondence set in Calibri looks like something dispatched from a leasing office. Imagine reading the Warren Commission report set in that. The author seems to settle on the consensus that surrounded TNR before this exchange made the news. It’s banal. At times it signals to its original objectives (e.g., Prof. Dr. style websites […

I love Univers as well, but the _Q_ is just _too_ weird by most folks perceptions.

Re: Times New American: A Tale of Two Fonts

#52

Post by xiphmont »

moron4hire wrote: post #50
tolerance wrote: post #23

This was a terrific, reasonable take on this “controversy”. I have to admit that the correspondence set in Calibri looks like something dispatched from a leasing office. Imagine reading the Warren Commission report set in that. The author seems to settle on the consensus that surrounded TNR before this exchange made the news. It’s banal. At times it signals to its original objectives (e.g., Prof. Dr. style websites […

I'm sorry, you can't argue the font choice signals banality in the same article in which you argue that readers aren't sophisticated enough on font choice to catch that serifs are supposed to signal professionalism.

He can, he did, and we're all here arguing about it, which somehow delights me.

Re: Times New American: A Tale of Two Fonts

#53

Post by xiphmont »

WillAdams wrote: post #51
tolerance wrote: post #23

This was a terrific, reasonable take on this “controversy”. I have to admit that the correspondence set in Calibri looks like something dispatched from a leasing office. Imagine reading the Warren Commission report set in that. The author seems to settle on the consensus that surrounded TNR before this exchange made the news. It’s banal. At times it signals to its original objectives (e.g., Prof. Dr. style websites […

I love Univers as well, but the _Q_ is just _too_ weird by most folks perceptions.

Q, more than any other glyph, is the letter that never fails to look weird in every typeface when I spend too much time looking at it/re-re-re-re-designing it.

Re: Times New American: A Tale of Two Fonts

#54

Post by swed420 »

gordonhart wrote: post #34
swed420 wrote: post #18

[flagged]

A few HN commenting guidelines might apply here: > Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes. > Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity. > Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

> Eschew flamebait.

Arguably the OP borders on flamebait if that's the standard.

> Avoid generic tangents.

OP encapsulates an example of my comment, and is not a generic tangent.

> Omit internet tropes.

meme != trope

> Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.

Like the first point, all or nothing.

> Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

Point taken.

Re: Times New American: A Tale of Two Fonts

#55

Post by djoldman »

Kwpolska wrote: post #45
djoldman wrote: post #38

From the linked https://federalcourt.press/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Eighth... > Typographic decisions should be made for a purpose. The Times of London chose the typeface Times New Roman to serve an audience looking for a quick read. Lawyers don’t want their audience to read fast and throw the document away; they want to maximize retention. Achieving that goal requires a different approach—different typefaces, diff…

This document is typeset in New Century Schoolbook.

Hrm, interesting: I couldn't tell the difference.

Re: Times New American: A Tale of Two Fonts

#56

Post by b40d-48b2-979e »

gumby271 wrote: post #21
magnio wrote: post #11

Shouldn't public documents by the government use a free and libre font? In fact, the mentioned Public Sans developed by the US federal government seems to be a great option, as it actually distinguishes the lowercase l and the uppercase I, something that, ironically, all suggested sans-serif alternatives fail to do.

You would hope, but changing this font isn't about making anything better, it's that Calibre was apparently a DEI font and had to go. I can't imagine these people thinking highly of an open source (Oooh communism) font that's also designed with accessibility in mind.

Are we still doing the communism thing? I thought the bogeyman is socialism now.

In any case, it would be nice to have some consistency across the government, and if they want to make a change, at least take prior works into account like what the Congress or SCOTUS are doing in their official texts.

Re: Times New American: A Tale of Two Fonts

#57

Post by croes »

austy69 wrote: post #33

> The general public doesn’t perceive serif typefaces as professional and authoritative, a priori, before prioritizing their use in formal settings. Instead, people first observe that government, academia, and corporate workplaces disproportionately use serif faces — or are trained to use them — and only then infer that serifs must mean professionalism and authority. A difficult to stomach claim followed up with evid…

The font was used by the London Times until 1972.

And nobody thinks of the London Times when he sees Times New Roman. It’s just a default font many used in Word.

Re: Times New American: A Tale of Two Fonts

#58

Post by otterley »

loughnane wrote: post #37
LucasFonts wrote: post #28

Our studio, LucasFonts, designed Calibri. Here are our CEO Luc(as) de Groot’s thoughts on the matter: Back to bad... Deciding to ditch Calibri as a ‘wasteful diversity’ font is both hilarious and sad. I designed Calibri to make reading on modern computer screens easier, and in 2006 Microsoft chose it to replace Times New Roman as the default font in the Office suite. Microsoft moved away from Times for good reasons.…

Fyi since your account is new. It’s a faux pas here to have a “company” account.

The company may well consist of only the poster himself.

Re: Times New American: A Tale of Two Fonts

#59

Post by treetalker »

mjmsmith wrote: post #49
xattt wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s the US government, and it could easily develop their own Liberty- or Freedom-type if the current administration wanted to leave their own mark.

Trump Grotesque.

But we repeat ourselves.

Re: Times New American: A Tale of Two Fonts

#60

Post by otterley »

jamesliudotcc wrote: post #35

As for Calibri, even Microsoft has moved on. They designed a successor font family for even better readability, and that happened before the State Department changed to Calibri. It also has serif variants. https://microsoft.design/articles/a-change-of-typeface-micro... No knock on Calibri, which I admire. (edited to put the link on its own line.)

This was discussed in the article.
Post reply on HN