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IBM Type

ibm.github.io

71–80 of 130 posts

Re: IBM Type

#71

Never use pure black (Hex value: #000000) for text, but instead, a range of grays. This irritates me greatly. I can understand somewhat the justification against pure white (a poor attempt at compensating for monitors being set by default to insane levels of brightness), but pure black? It doesn't make sense to reduce contrast this way.

Whenever I put any of those fancy grayish sites side to side with a printed magazine, the ink on the paper is more black and the paper is more white than what I see on the screen. No wonder paper is easier to read. Then I open the developer tools, set color to black and background to white and the screen is as readable as the paper. It seems that they are missing some basic usability tests.

Re: IBM Type

#72
post #2

Aaw, I guess this means IBM PDF manuals will lose their distinctive look. "IBM-Bodoni" font I guess for the title? https://www-304.ibm.com/servers/resourcelink/svc00100.nsf/pa...

I think this is all about establishing a new distinctive look. The current one screams “1990” at anybody reading. Now they need something that is distinctly IBM while gently whispering “2020” into the readers ear.

How about something that proudly states "1970"? That would be cool!

Re: IBM Type

#73
post #35
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a good comparison between multiple png optimizers here: http://optipng.sourceforge.net/pngtech/optipng.html > pngcrush by Glenn Randers-Pehrson, available at http://pmt.sourceforge.net/pngcrush , is an open-source program that iterates over PNG filters and zlib (Deflate) parameters, compresses the image repeatedly using each parameter configuration, and chooses the configuration that yields the smallest compr…

In the end it does not matter since they did not use any of them. If I can reduce size of that page in 2 minutes, without any webdev background and using the only tool I could remember if few seconds than there is something seriously wrong with the way they treat visitors.

[deleted]

Re: IBM Type

#74

Never use pure black (Hex value: #000000) for text, but instead, a range of grays. This irritates me greatly. I can understand somewhat the justification against pure white (a poor attempt at compensating for monitors being set by default to insane levels of brightness), but pure black? It doesn't make sense to reduce contrast this way.

An art professor instructed me that black pigment paint was to be avoided as it makes the image look flat. Rather, a black-like colour is to be built in layers of darkening shades. I could see this applying to graphic layout with multiple colours, but I'm not sure if it fits for printed type.

> I'm not sure if it fits for printed type.

No, there is no contrast issue with printed type. The problems with displays isn't their high contrast but overall poor ergonomics and usually completely moronic default brightnesses.

Re: IBM Type

#77
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's because your connection took a bit to load the webfont, so the page was first rendered in one font, then rerendered, when the preferred font was loaded.

Sure, but it actually changed 2 times, so some intermediate font was loaded in between.

Oh, that was IBM changing their design language.

Re: IBM Type

#78
post #71

Never use pure black (Hex value: #000000) for text, but instead, a range of grays. This irritates me greatly. I can understand somewhat the justification against pure white (a poor attempt at compensating for monitors being set by default to insane levels of brightness), but pure black? It doesn't make sense to reduce contrast this way.

Whenever I put any of those fancy grayish sites side to side with a printed magazine, the ink on the paper is more black and the paper is more white than what I see on the screen. No wonder paper is easier to read. Then I open the developer tools, set color to black and background to white and the screen is as readable as the paper. It seems that they are missing some basic usability tests.

Paper is always easier to read because the white on your paper doesn't _glow_.

Reflected vs. emitted light.

Re: IBM Type

#79

Thanks for the love and critique. Issues are love too: https://github.com/ibm/type/issues/new Some things to keep in mind: — v1 will not be released until early next year. We published publicly so it is easy for teams to test and give feedback. — The documentation site was a quickfix and will merge into a silky smooth GatsbyJS site later. Give that project some love at https://github.com/gatsbyjs/gatsby — We are cons…

Given the comments here, you might want to call out more clearly that this is not the stable/final release of either the font or website to set expectations, etc.

Re: IBM Type

#80
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In nearly every subfield of computing, along nearly every metric, most people would kill for a 20% improvement. A processor 20% faster would dominate the market for years. A new compression algorithm that was 20% smaller would be either copied or used by every archiving system. And yes, a website reduced by 20% is significant.

> In nearly every subfield of computing, along nearly every metric, most people would kill for a 20% improvement I doubt it. 20% is not even worth to turn a straightforward algorithm to a more complex and convoluted (but more performant) one, or to switch backend technology, or db store, etc. As for a "20% faster processor"? Big deal, I was raised in an era when we got 2x faster processors every 2 years. (Besides, we…

If you use the correct tools, such optimizations introduce little complexity, if any. Just add a gulp plugin or select "optimize assets" in your Netlify panel or something similar.

If not using the correct tools, simply you won't survive for long in the market. Probabely you can still manage to sell domains or such, but can't compete in innovation-based sections.

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