171–180 of 184 posts
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Well, to encapsulate your point here - you don’t believe in the legitimacy of government so of course any attempt by the government to legitimize itself you’d find disagreeable. Is that right?
Legitimacy isn't a binary, especially not across a nation of many millions.
It's so frustrating. We already created a font for government communication, Public Sans. It looks great, it's very strong, neutral, readable, and respectable. Clearly a lot of effort went into making it accessible etc. But we have to throw that away because the wrong party was in charge when it happened. https://public-sans.digital.gov/ I'm so sick of this RETVRN crap happening seemingly everywhere. Yes, public buil…
That said, for print, I think serif is a better option.
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Legitimacy isn't a binary, especially not across a nation of many millions.
Sure but now I don’t know what you’re talking about or what point you’re trying to make.
Think about how HN just takes whatever the EPA says at face value vs scrutinizing ICE. Every office, department, etc, etc, aspires to get the EPA treatment from as much of society as possible. Acting the part is part is part of that.
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I prefer the protestant restrained aesthetic. Spiritual over material. Governmental buildings should be tastefully humble. It is a signal that the government is a servant of the people.
What’s an example that you’re thinking of? I think this can make sense - I mean if you have a town of 5,000 people and a government office there or something you probably don’t need a big, giant, building (unless that’s the message you’re trying to send). It’s also impractical from a cost-standpoint. Federal buildings though should have gravitas and signify importance. If they don’t, and/or we think the government is…
Similarly, I prefer government buildings to go for a similar route. It doesn’t mean that buildings have to ugly or small. But similar to Protestant churches it can humble, functional and elegant at the same time.
In between all the political bitching, no one has ever noted the fact that TNR will render correctly on basically any computer built in the last 30 years, including crusty UNIX workstations from the 90s.
When I jumped into my GNU/Linux journey in late 90s, TNR was nowhere to be found, and I believe is only available through "ms-ttcorefonts" or whatever the package is called (IOW, Times New Roman actually comes from Microsoft). I believe "Times" is the venerable standard, and has been present on Unices and Macs since... forever. Now, TNR is the same metrics-wise IIRC, and thus it was always a recommendation to use a f…
Linotype then made their own variant simply called Times Roman, which differed mostly in having slanted serifs. The Times switched to this in 1982.
Both Monotype and Linotype produced digital versions, but Linotype's was initially slightly cheaper and thus more popular. In 1984, Adobe licensed it for inclusion in the core Postscript font set, and for a while became the "default" proportional serif typeface.
As WYSIWYG word processing and DTP took off, lots of knock-offs appeared, often called something like "Thymes", "London", or just plain "Roman". At some point, Monotype reduced their prices but by the late 80s Times New Roman was sadly neglected, seen almost as just another clone (after all, The Times itself was using the Linotype version by then!).
TNR became one of the core fonts in Truetype (initially an Apple/Microsoft collaboration, intended to break Adobe's stranglehold on computer typography), so was included by default in Windows 3.1 and Apple's System 7, leading to a resurgence in its popularity.
The Times then moved to Monotype's Times Modern (which features serifs that are even more slanted than Linotype's Times Roman) when they moved to tabloid format in the early 2000s. Monotype bought Linotype at around the same time, so all three fonts are now available from the same source at the same price.
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> The whole decision seems like a joke to me and a lost opportunity to set a decent design standard. That would require that the individuals involved actually have taste . Instead, as with everything else from this administration, it's a toot on their favourite dog whistle.
Nah, it's just the US reinventing the German Antiqua-Fraktur dispute from more than a century ago, where only Fraktur was appropriate for expressing serious Germanic ideas. A sans typeface is un-German... ahh, un-American!
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I don’t mind the overall point of your argument, but it’s funny to see a claim that Americans have more reason to use Greco-Roman architecture than a Middle Eastern country. Classical Greek art actually took a lot of influence from the Middle East, and I believe Alexander actually reached te area around Afghanistan (and a Hellenistic kingdom existed there for a while), unlike America.
Well I wouldn’t argue Afghanistan is part of the Middle East culturally or geographically, but even if you did want to argue that, Alexander came and conquered that area for a little bit and then left. It wasn’t ever really culturally Greek.
But the main point isn’t whether afghanistan is Greek; it’s not of course. The main point is that it’s funny to hear an American argue that the US has more of a claim on Greek architecture than Afghanistan.
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Because its not real. He is completely right its a 19th century cargo cult of classicism. Its a modern anachronistic mashup of various old styles, I can bet if you asked an actual Greek or Roman era expert they will say these buildings combine elements 500 600 years apart. I like how it looks but its also lazy and cheesy, I can't blame people who think we need more styles.
You’re missing the point. The styles aren’t meant to be 1-1 matches of Greek or Roman architecture, they’re rather good attempts at building and designing our governments buildings which that they harken to where our legal and cultural traditions hail from. That’s why the Capitol looks the way it does. I’m not sure how that’s lazy or cheesy. I’m certainly open minded to other styles but they need to be rooted in west…
I think it is a lazy copy paste of old tropes. I know because I can see these tendencies in myself too. I like some old styles and if I had my way I could keep listening to newer bands that replicate this style my whole life. But the thing is, without the original inspirational fire behind the style its just a nice copy.
I see you had dissed on brutalism some time before, I really don't understand why. I feel at least in some ways brutalism is a non-pastiche manner achieves things like the imposing sense of grandeur and power of classical architecture.
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Nah, it's just the US reinventing the German Antiqua-Fraktur dispute from more than a century ago, where only Fraktur was appropriate for expressing serious Germanic ideas. A sans typeface is un-German... ahh, un-American!
Of course, a couple of decades after that, Fraktur was declared too Jewish and thoroughly eradicated, killing among other things the sole remaining independent strain of Latin-script handwriting (other than the dominant one invented as a book-copying aid by the Italian humanists, thus “italic”).