Web design is not 95% typography...
well, tbh, web design is not the kind of thing that can be characterized as 95% anything, except as a rhetorical flourish.
Web Design is 95% Typography
71–80 of 87 posts
Re: Web Design is 95% Typography
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
Regarding the type being large, iA have very good reasons for that being the case, which they outline very clearly in another article [1]. [1] http://informationarchitects.net/blog/100e2r/ "The 100% Easy-2-Read Standard"
That says it is the browser default size and that is not correct. Here, check it out: http://pastehtml.com/view/cc5nellwp.html First line uses your browser's default. Second line is their setting (~21px). Such huge text is definitely not easy to read for me on any of my devices.
>That says it is the browser default size and that is not correct.
It is correct, just slightly misleading. The size is made to look like the browser default size taking display density into account. It is adaptive.
The 16px font, in the screenshot you send, is not "browser default size". Or, it is, but not as it was intended by browser makers. See, when it was chosen as default, we used 14" 1024x768 monitors or worse. Anybody who wants to show this as it was intended, needs to take account the DPI of a modern screen and increase the 16px accordingly.
Trust me, those guys have gave a lot of thought into readability and font sizing.
>Such huge text is definitely not easy to read for me on any of my devices.
Actually it is. You are just not used to it. Whereas you are used to fonts of exactly the same size (or very near) when reading books. Some people have been conditioned to stare at tiny fonts (a 12-14px font is a monstrosity on a modern display) and proper type jumps at them. Check also Zeldman's reasoning:
http://www.zeldman.com/2012/05/18/web-design-manifesto-2012/
Re: Web Design is 95% Typography
#73This is sort of off-topic, but does anyone know what kind of theme/blogging software this blog is using?
Looking at the code, I'd guess Wordpress + iA4 theme
Re: Web Design is 95% Typography
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
That says it is the browser default size and that is not correct. Here, check it out: http://pastehtml.com/view/cc5nellwp.html First line uses your browser's default. Second line is their setting (~21px). Such huge text is definitely not easy to read for me on any of my devices.
> That says it is the browser default size and that is not correct. It is correct, just slightly misleading. The size is made to look like the browser default size taking display density into account. It is adaptive. The 16px font, in the screenshot you send, is not "browser default size". Or, it is, but not as it was intended by browser makers. See, when it was chosen as default, we used 14" 1024x768 monitors or wor…
No, the font is huge compared to a book. Yes, I did held a book infront of my face at reading distance to compare. The font here at HN is pretty much what a book is like. I use a 1680x1050 22 inch screen.
Re: Web Design is 95% Typography
#75Re: Web Design is 95% Typography
#76Comically, here's how this is rendering for me using Chromium on Ubuntu: https://s3.amazonaws.com/1overBlog/screenshots/treat-text-as...
I get this quite often (Chromium/Ubuntu here, too). It usually fixes itself by zooming out/zooming in. I always surf with 120% zoom, and I've kind of assumed the bug is related to that. Do you surf with a non-default zoom level?
Yeah, I'm in the habit of CTRL++ and CTRL+- upon opening pages that use custom fonts (JavaScript fonts).
Re: Web Design is 95% Typography
#77Re: Web Design is 95% Typography
#78Am I alone in finding the fi ligature generally annoying/difficult to read in general? I see it in print occasionally and it always feels like a kerning mistake that is hurting my ability to quickly parse the letters.
Re: Web Design is 95% Typography
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Yes, and it will radically change as the web stops being English / Latin alphabet dominated. It will never stop being English/Latin alphabet dominated for the English (Americas, Australians, etc) though. So, it's not like english web designers will see any major change in their work, or english web users...
Well, I suspect we shall see words entering our lexicon from China - every right thinking 人 would agree :-)
We've stolen a tremendous number of words with out adding arabic/hebrew/cyrillic/japanese/etc characters, I don't see any reason to assume we'll start with chinese.
Re: Web Design is 95% Typography
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
Honestly though, I think we need to take more responsibility in helping shape that copy. I've also had pretty bad experiences when the client had a dedicated writer assigned. My favorite approach is to, whenever copy is missing, go to a competitors site or Wikipedia, and copy/paste. At least you get an approximation, and it helps everybody who looks at the project start responding to and thinking about content. As UX…
On the opposite end of this, no amount of organizing for the impending content by creating fake but ideal character counts (something I've done on nearly every site I've worked on) has led to those constraints actually being followed by the internal staff or external clients I've worked with. This is easily one of the biggest after-the-fact issues/time consumers I deal with in dev because often times, the content isn…
With all due respect, neither the designer, nor the client knows what the right copy and the right layout is.
A/B testing does.
The layout will be changed to accomodate the best conversion of customers to cash. Anything else is under-selling your client.