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Web designers should get good training in typography (2006)

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Re: Web designers should get good training in typography (2006)

#31

Post by proc0 »

MrVandemar wrote: post #13
proc0 wrote: post #7

Not anymore, maybe back when static sites were common. Web sites now are applications with lots of interactivity. The interactive design is often lost because designers are mostly designing for static layouts, with interactivity falling lower in priority. This then becomes a bad experience with developers having to constantly fix interactivity issues that were born from lack of design and product specs.

>Web sites now are applications with lots of interactivity. You should prefix that with "some", or even "most". But certainly not all of them. There are plenty of static sites still around from yesteryear, and plenty still being made today.

Maybe I missed it but the article isn't qualifying their prescription either. So yes I agree but the point still stands, interactivity is now the most important part of any website that is not a trivial website.

Re: Web designers should get good training in typography (2006)

#32

Post by diego_sandoval »

dkarras wrote: post #9

It is a bit ironic that the website has white text on black background which is no-no on screens as the very high contrast creates ghosting and eye strain / hurt for many people. Carefully read the text, then look at anywhere else and you'll see ghost lines everywhere for a few minutes. So the text should at least be gray-ish to decrease the contrast if you want to go that way. This works pretty well on paper, but su…

I never have this problem, but it might be because I always use my monitor in the range of 15% to 30% of its maximum brightness.

Re: Web designers should get good training in typography (2006)

#33

Post by proc0 »

brailsafe wrote: post #16
MrVandemar wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Web sites now are applications with lots of interactivity. You should prefix that with "some", or even "most". But certainly not all of them. There are plenty of static sites still around from yesteryear, and plenty still being made today.

Interactivity is important if interactivity is important, and should be given the attention it deserves, but JavaScript people have always wanted to believe it's always more important than the fundamentals of text-based information, which I'd argue it rarely surpasses in importance. People like to conveniently forget that even if you're building a richly interactive thing that's better described as an application, al…

Typography is still important, but I'm saying interactivity is even more important yet still is a blindspot for most designers. You can imagine two websites, one with subpar typography but excellent responsiveness and interactivity, and the other with excellent typography but is slow and interactions are confusing or don't work perfectly. It's not hard to see interactivity wins.

Many UIs are notorious for bad typography but are still successful because they are responsive and smooth. I like typography but it's useless if the site loads slowly or the navigation is not intuitive, etc.

Re: Web designers should get good training in typography (2006)

#36

Post by smrq »

userbinator wrote: post #30
dkarras wrote: post #9

It is a bit ironic that the website has white text on black background which is no-no on screens as the very high contrast creates ghosting and eye strain / hurt for many people. Carefully read the text, then look at anywhere else and you'll see ghost lines everywhere for a few minutes. So the text should at least be gray-ish to decrease the contrast if you want to go that way. This works pretty well on paper, but su…

Turn your monitor's brightness down. Those of us who have monitors which aren't left at eye-bleedingly-bright defaults shouldn't have to suffer low contrast text (which is much harder to fix).

I find this argument unconvincing for the same reason that the answer to the musical loudness war isn't "turn your speakers down". When contrast is maximized 100% of the time, there's no room for emphasis.

Re: Web designers should get good training in typography (2006)

#37

Post by userbinator »

smrq wrote: post #36
userbinator wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Turn your monitor's brightness down. Those of us who have monitors which aren't left at eye-bleedingly-bright defaults shouldn't have to suffer low contrast text (which is much harder to fix).

I find this argument unconvincing for the same reason that the answer to the musical loudness war isn't "turn your speakers down". When contrast is maximized 100% of the time, there's no room for emphasis.

I find your argument unconvincing too, because having your monitor set to a comfortable brightness was the norm before designers ignorant of brightness controls started ruining it for everyone else.

The "musical loudness war" is completely irrelevant and makes no sense in this context either. Turn your speakers down if your ears are hurting.

Re: Web designers should get good training in typography (2006)

#38

Post by jeroenhd »

thrwy_918 wrote: post #29
xnx wrote: post #12

Typography should be left to the user agent and user style sheet. Attempts to make sites "pixel perfect" is the worst habit from the print-world that designers brought online with them.

what percentage of users would you estimate are interested in choosing or writing a user style sheet?

A surprising amount, actually. Mobile phones rezoom and reflow text and content automatically, and if you click reader mode, take over presentation entirely.

I don't agree with the idea that all CSS should be banned, but the pixel-perfect designs, that seem to come from Photoshop, are definitely annoying because they have rarely been tested on anything but what the designer had lying around. Have a device with a different scale factor? A phone with a non-iPhone screen ratio? Perhaps you dare use a browser that shows scroll bars by default? Good luck getting use out of any of those over-designed marketing websites.

I use tree style tabs so my computer has a 1920x1080 resolution, but not the entire width of the screen is available to websites. I've had to collapse the side panel repeatedly because some websites just couldn't deal with the idea that a desktop browser had a resolution that wasn't full width. I'll take on of those Motherfucking Websites over the marketing nonsense any time.

Re: Web designers should get good training in typography (2006)

#39

Post by dylan604 »

dkarras wrote: post #9

It is a bit ironic that the website has white text on black background which is no-no on screens as the very high contrast creates ghosting and eye strain / hurt for many people. Carefully read the text, then look at anywhere else and you'll see ghost lines everywhere for a few minutes. So the text should at least be gray-ish to decrease the contrast if you want to go that way. This works pretty well on paper, but su…

Until pandemic, most of my time was spent in dimmed rooms like edit bays which is a common lighting condition for that type of space. The dark color scheme is pretty much the default for any software you'd expect to find in that environment. Since the primary type of UI that I create is also used by people in that industry, they typically have a dark background scheme too. Now, that I no longer work in those caves, the bright colors are taking some getting used to and I'm still not there.

For you to say it sucks without saying "for me" at the end of it is just you assuming everyone has the same preferences as you. I can tell you from experience, this is just a bad belief to hold.

Re: Web designers should get good training in typography (2006)

#40

Post by nextaccountic »

userbinator wrote: post #37
smrq wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find this argument unconvincing for the same reason that the answer to the musical loudness war isn't "turn your speakers down". When contrast is maximized 100% of the time, there's no room for emphasis.

I find your argument unconvincing too, because having your monitor set to a comfortable brightness was the norm before designers ignorant of brightness controls started ruining it for everyone else. The "musical loudness war" is completely irrelevant and makes no sense in this context either. Turn your speakers down if your ears are hurting.

But the problem with the loudness war isn't the loudness per se, but the loss of dynamic range: if everything is as loud as it can be, there is no room for emphasizing anything.

It's like, if you are always shouting, you can never raise your voice.

Which is exactly what is happening with full contrast websites: if everything is at max contrast, there is no room for emphasis.

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