Hacker News Reader

Comment by naner | Hacker News Reader

I am bewildered by the amount of character typography experts seem to be able to discern from (what to me are) these plain little serif-less monotone Latin characters that litter our screens. I do notice when things are very wrong, but I'm sort of puzzled by the amount of design and individuality that is expected to be incorporated in such a small space. How much variance is possible under these types of constraints?

View on HN

In terms of body text, typography isn't meant to attract much attention. The common reader shouldn't notice subtle differences. Bad typography is easily noticed and feels wrong. Good typography communicates as it should and doesn't command attention. Readers might not consciously notice differences, but they might feel them. Some poorly-designed blogs instantly make me feel claustrophobic. If they opened up the line-height on the body text it would instantly feel and read better. In the same way smaller differences in a font design can change its feeling, character and legibility.

Type designers spend much time adjusting subtle nuances of a font to evoke a certain feeling as a whole.

Intuitively, I think similarly--and then I put two pieces of the same text next to each other, one in Helvetica and one in Roboto, and I immediately sense a subtle difference in personality that I can't put my finger on but I know is there.

Roboto has slightly looser strokes and shorter tails than Helvetica, but their letter shapes are very close. Here is a diagram showing Roboto overlaying Helvetica:

http://theunderstatement.com/post/11645166791/roboto-vs-helv...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com