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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)

#61

Post by ricardobeat »

mrob wrote: post #59
jen729w wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds really boring, so I’ll say no thanks. The web isn’t just about the words. It’s about the look and the feel and the imagination. Just like print was, and still is.

Fancy typography is the realm of magazines, not books, and I can't think of a single magazine that's stuck in my memory the way real books do. If you have to use fancy typography to make your text feel more interesting it probably isn't worth reading.

Have any web pages stuck in your memory like real books do? The web is akin to magazines and not books.

Nowhere in the article it talks about making it visually interesting.

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

#62

Post by dkarras »

zerocrates wrote: post #26
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…

That's a "prefers-color-scheme: dark" style: if your machine is set to light mode then it's black on white, well okay, very dark gray on very light gray. (Also the text in dark mode is slightly gray but it's very slight). I don't think it's totally crazy to present text like this to users who are advertising a preference for white-on-black (though of course there's an argument to be made about the difference between…

Preferring dark mode does not necessitate presenting #f0f0f0 text on #000 background. Lots of websites out there that present a proper dark mode when they sniff the preference.

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

#63

Post by _Algernon_ »

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.

Typography has a solution for emphasis that doesn't use contrast, and it's called italics. Use that.

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

#64

Post by xigoi »

dkarras wrote: post #60
xigoi wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The link you posted is exactly how I normally read every webpage – I have Dark Reader set up to make all text white on a black background. Light backgrounds make my eyes bleed and I actively avoid working with software that forces them on me.

I am not talking about dark / light mode difference. I too prefer dark mode in everything I use. Dark mode does not mean highest contrast text on black background though.

Yes, I am talking about pure white on pure black. I find gray on slightly darker gray hard to read.

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

#65

Post by dkarras »

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).

Yeah, in my case that is not it. Turning the brightness up makes it significantly worse though, I agree.

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

#66

Post by mrob »

ricardobeat wrote: post #61
mrob wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fancy typography is the realm of magazines, not books, and I can't think of a single magazine that's stuck in my memory the way real books do. If you have to use fancy typography to make your text feel more interesting it probably isn't worth reading.

Have any web pages stuck in your memory like real books do? The web is akin to magazines and not books. Nowhere in the article it talks about making it visually interesting.

Yes, but not any with typography like the article. I use custom CSS and Firefox's Reader View to disable a lot of design/typography.

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

#67

Post by gherkinnn »

alecst wrote: post #3

I admire all the work the typographers do to make amazing-looking websites, and yet I prefer to read sites (like mathpages, or Dan Luu's site) which have next to no styling. They're just easier for me to read. I'm definitely not hating, but I feel like it's good to keep in mind where the point of diminishing returns is.

> Treat text as user interface

> Slightly more famous examples of unornamental websites that treat text as interface are: google, eBay, craigslist, youtube, flickr, Digg, reddit, delicious.

If only the article recommended doing just that.

Gradients and spinning globes, and intricately designed animations aren't typography. Though Stripe's typography is exquisite. Amusingly enough, text that takes up the full horizontal space is not.

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

#68

Post by ricardobeat »

bobbylarrybobby wrote: post #17
lazyvar wrote: post #8

(2006) An article about the importance of typography uses massive, unreadable font at 25px.

And with ink traps in the title font.

Pretty sure it didn’t use that custom font back then, and the iA swiss founder would never have done this. They seem to be focused on apps lately and probably had someone new try their hand at “modernising” the old website…

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

#69

Post by blowski »

Almondsetat wrote: post #52
MrVandemar wrote: post #14

My contention is that not only web-designers, but everyone who uses a word processor should get at least baseline training in typography and layout. It should be a short high-school course. The basic rules are not that hard. It's possible to make decent looking documents in Microsoft Word / Libre Office / Abiword / whatever, but people with no idea what they're doing (and no idea that they have no idea what they're d…

Yeah, just another niche high school course that everyone should follow, that’s what our schools need

Indeed. Medium has wonderful typography, but it doesn’t make me want to read them.

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

#70

Post by RoyalSloth »

MrVandemar wrote: post #14

My contention is that not only web-designers, but everyone who uses a word processor should get at least baseline training in typography and layout. It should be a short high-school course. The basic rules are not that hard. It's possible to make decent looking documents in Microsoft Word / Libre Office / Abiword / whatever, but people with no idea what they're doing (and no idea that they have no idea what they're d…

I don't get it why the Microsoft Word team didn't create a good looking default template that people could just use without any fiddling necessary. They had more than 20 years at this point to create something that looks pleasing out of the box, but when you check the available templates they are all an ugly looking mess.
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