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

61–70 of 184 posts

Re: Times New American: A Tale of Two Fonts

#61

Post by tolerance »

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.

Why not? One quality is inherent, the other inherited. The typeface was developed with banality in mind and presumably become popular because of its utility in this respect. The ensuing popularity in word processors and on the Web likely lead to the idea that it’s more professional than others.

Again, the author:

> Indeed, the stronger explanation for Times New Roman’s long reign isn’t aesthetic excellence, but practicality and inertia.

Re: Times New American: A Tale of Two Fonts

#62

Post by beej71 »

theandrewbailey wrote: post #14
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.

https://public-sans.digital.gov/

That actually doesn't look horrible to my untrained eye. But the web page mentions accessibility, so I'm a little bit surprised it still exists.

Re: Times New American: A Tale of Two Fonts

#63

Post by clan »

sgarland wrote: post #39
jamesliudotcc wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The worst is Times New Roman text with Calibri page numbers. A sure sign somebody never learned how to use Microsoft Word.

Does Word not default to switching all typefaces - header, footer, etc.? If so, IMO that’s a bad design that violates the principle of least surprise.

Word works very well without surprises if you have learned how to use templating and proper headers - the semantics. Big if!

I will claim most people still just do selections and change font/weight.

So what is good design? Something which enforces our geeky ideas of a base font? Or something which let people easily do what they want to do and get work done? Who should get the least amount of surprise?

Design is taste. Taste leads to principles. Principles makes things easy. Design is also compromise. Compromise is hard. Design is hard.

Re: Times New American: A Tale of Two Fonts

#64

Post by constantcrying »

Sure, Times New Roman is not a great font and comes with many negative connotations. But having official government communication look like a highschoolers first digital essay is even worse.

The obvious solution is doing what many large companies, as well as other governments are doing. Create your own Font. (e.g. https://styleguide.bundesregierung.de/sg-de/basiselemente/sc... https://www.ibm.com/plex/)

Re: Times New American: A Tale of Two Fonts

#65

Post by f30e3dfed1c9 »

tolerance wrote: post #61
moron4hire wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why not? One quality is inherent, the other inherited. The typeface was developed with banality in mind and presumably become popular because of its utility in this respect. The ensuing popularity in word processors and on the Web likely lead to the idea that it’s more professional than others. Again, the author: > Indeed, the stronger explanation for Times New Roman’s long reign isn’t aesthetic excellence, but pract…

"The typeface was developed with banality in mind..."

That's completely wrong. Times New Roman was designed for legibility at small sizes, in narrow columns, on absorbent newsprint, printed at high speed. That is, it was designed explicitly for a very specific purpose, which it fills admirably.

None of that should be taken as any kind of comment on the current brouhaha.

Re: Times New American: A Tale of Two Fonts

#66

Post by Y_Y »

Suzuran wrote: post #36
Y_Y wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Martin Bormann issued a circular (the "normal type decree") to all public offices which declared Fraktur (and its corollary, the Sütterlin-based handwriting) to be Judenlettern (Jewish letters) and prohibited their further use. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraktur I don't know if you meant to invoke pro/anti-Nazi associations with this typeface but it's unfortunate that such a fantastic lettering style carries aro…

I am aware (of the Judenlettern decree). The reference to exactly this was intentional. (Edit to make this really obvious: The joke here is that "fraktur = nazis" became such a meme that the nazis themselves were annoyed by it and forbade its use, but this is exactly the kind of thing the present administration would either be unaware of or simply ignore and then use fraktur intentionally to pander to neo-nazis.)

Thanks for spelling it out. I had a feeling that's the point you were making, but that level of subtlety has a hard time getting through, even on highbrow hn. Hence I like to err on the side of spelling things out, especially since I'm much more often a reader than a writer.

Re: Times New American: A Tale of Two Fonts

#67

Post by toast0 »

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.

Times New Roman is available at no cost under the Microsoft Core Fonts for the Web. (Microsoft no longer distributes this, but the license allows redistribution and redistribution is popular). AFAIK, Apple explicitly licenses the fonts and most open source OS distributions have a package for these fonts.

It's not libre, but font copyright is weird anyway, and the federal government doesn't always need to follow copyright.

Re: Times New American: A Tale of Two Fonts

#68

Post by piker »

One thing that I don’t see much mentioned in the article or the comments is that for Word documents at least, Times New Roman may be a more portable default if you want the document to render identically across platforms. Not everyone has Word and Word proprietary fonts installed. Times is proprietary but available on Linux and MacOS and has a metric compatible substitute in the open source. Not sure about Calibre.

Yes, fonts can be bundled with a document but that might impose legal considerations as well as technical.

Using more "standard" fonts like Times New Roman might thus help fight against the word processing monopoly.

Re: Times New American: A Tale of Two Fonts

#69

Post by 3rodents »

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.

That’s not true. Sincere engagement is what people expect. A copy-and-paste of a statement is less desirable than, say, Lucas himself coming to post his thoughts, but it is still valuable and not a faux pas. The spirit of HN is: does the post or comment add something of value?

Re: Times New American: A Tale of Two Fonts

#70

Post by tolerance »

f30e3dfed1c9 wrote: post #65
tolerance wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? One quality is inherent, the other inherited. The typeface was developed with banality in mind and presumably become popular because of its utility in this respect. The ensuing popularity in word processors and on the Web likely lead to the idea that it’s more professional than others. Again, the author: > Indeed, the stronger explanation for Times New Roman’s long reign isn’t aesthetic excellence, but pract…

"The typeface was developed with banality in mind..." That's completely wrong. Times New Roman was designed for legibility at small sizes, in narrow columns, on absorbent newsprint, printed at high speed. That is, it was designed explicitly for a very specific purpose, which it fills admirably. None of that should be taken as any kind of comment on the current brouhaha.

I hate for us to have to make it clear that any claim in favor of the typeface’s suitability should not be interpreted as direct support for those responsible for re-instituting it. This isn’t an admonishment, but a lament I hope you may share.

While TNR wasn’t designed to evoke banality in its less desirable connotations I do think the way that you’re describing it match sensibilities that the word “banal” can also carry; Ordinary, commonplace. I admit—it’s a stretch I’m taking. But how far from banal is the utilitarian?

Post reply on HN