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Comment by jcampbell1 | Hacker News Reader

I find it quite surprising that the author is so passionate about typefaces, but serves his own blog in Verdana. Good thing it is not called JaringJireJall.net [1]

That being said, I really think the days of sans fonts are close to over. 10 years from now, we will all be reading on 300 dpi screens and taste in typography will return to being the dominate feature of design.

I can't wait until I can read the Economist online in the correct typeface. I can walk down an airplane isle and recognize that font in less than a second. The New Yorker also uses a font that seems to be unique. The Atlantic needs a custom typeface.

I am so excited that high DPI screens are going to be the norm. The web design world as we know it today is about shitty flourishing with artwork. 10 years from now it will be about designing beautiful glyphs that represent the brand.

[1] J is particularly gross in Verdana.

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You sure told him.

May sound funny coming from a typography-obsessive whose website has used Verdana as the text face for its entire nine-year existence, but I just don’t care much for Verdana for anything other than use on relatively low-resolution displays at small sizes. (E.g. Verdana’s uppercase I and J. Ugh.) Interesting expansion of the two families, though.

http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/11/16/georgia-verdana

Ikea Switches From Futura to Verdana

Horrible decision. Baffling, really. I have never seen Verdana look good in any way other than in small sizes on-screen. (Via Adam Lisagor.)

http://daringfireball.net/linked/2009/08/26/ikea-futura

I also find daringfireball's typeface to be too small to read comfortably on modern displays. (I understand picking Verdana back in 2002, but it's not so nice now.)

Un-anti-aliased (aliased?) Verdana at a certain size (11 or 12 point? Can't recall) was the very best pixellated optimised font for the web when Gruber designed his blog.

He hasn't redesigned since.

His blog is nearly unreadable on my non-retina display. I can only imagine how small the font looks on a Macbook Pro.

⌘+

I use readability to convert the content to be readable on my devices(computer, kindle, mobile phone...) .

You can change it via a link at the bottom to http://daringfireball.net/preferences/

"sans fonts are close to over"

I'm curious as to why you believe this. Some of the most versatile fonts are sans-serif, i.e. Helvetica, Gotham, DIN, Gill Sans, Futura, and Franklin Gothic.

Serif fonts have been under-represented for years, because our displays just aren't good enough to do them justice. When the pendulum swings, it always swings too far - look for serif fonts to become the next big thing.

Personally I think this prediction is a little premature because the retina displays aren't widespread yet. I've got my eye on Open Sans for the near future.

You are right, I don't believe that. I was exaggerating, and mostly thinking about how impossible it is to make a serif typeface that works on low dpi displays. TNR is the only serif face that is well hinted in my opinion.

There are much better options with sans typefaces, which often look nice on low dpi displays. My point was mainly that we are currently choosing among sans and TNR, rather than among all typefaces.

That's true but I've always thought of it because serif generally feels warm and historic, while sans-serif can often feel modern and emotionally detached.

For quite a number of European and American fashion sites, most use sans-serif because they want to appear bold, but emotionally subdued from the user, letting the photos of the products and models do more of the talking.

You mean like the site you are looking at right now?

    body {font-family:Verdana; font-size:10pt; color:#828282;}
    td   {font-family:Verdana; font-size:10pt; color:#828282;}

Neither this site nor its operator claim to be passionate about typefaces.

I'm interested in this. As someone who doesn't pay that much attention to typography (beyond the obvious 'Papyrus is bad' stuff) what makes individual typefaces preferable over a standard typeface for all similarly structured content?

(Besides branding, that is.)

It's pure marketing. There's no objective, measurable difference.

Yes there is. Certain typefaces are objectively easier to read than others, and some work better for certain content than others. Some are best for body text, some are best for headlines, etc. Some are optimized for low resolution screens, some for print (and as such work well on high resolution screens).

A great recent example that appeared on HN was the typeface designed for road signs, which the designers then put through Germany(?)'s test suite for legibility at distance in various road conditions and determined the new font was objectively legible at greater distance than all previous standard road-sign fonts with which it was compared.

[By request, I found the original article: http://ilovetypography.com/2012/04/19/the-design-of-a-signag... ]

Do you happen to have the link to that? Must have missed that and I'd like to read it.

http://ilovetypography.com/2012/04/19/the-design-of-a-signag...

I remember reading a post several days ago, mentioning that particular font face could help a paper score higher.

This is from very long back. In school, I once passed an exam on grace marks given because of my graceful handwriting (this was writing in the 'Devanagari' script, which even naturally allows for more calligraphy than the Roman script).

Edward Tufte's forum has some good discussions on type

This one is short

http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0...

but see the collection of additional threads at the bottom of that thread.*

Also, Bringhurst: http://www.amazon.com/Elements-Typographic-Style-Robert-Brin...

------------------

*I like the "local masters" concept Tufte has (full disclosure, I helped prototype it), and Wikipedia does something similar.

Don't worry about it too much. Most people don't care. I am the kind of guy that walks into the Google offices and immediately thinks "What the fuck is this place, a daycare center?" Most people disagree, and think the Google decor is wonderful. My opinion is likely not mainstream.

Every font is designed for a purpose. Serif fonts are designed to help the brain recognize the different letters. Comic Sans was designed to be used informal. Helvetica was designed to be used in signage. Verdana was designed to be readable from (72dpi) computer screens. And so on.

So as screen resolutions increase a serif font can help the brain to recognize small letters increasing readability.

Serif fonts are designed to emulate Roman inscriptions, which had serifs to help water drain out of them without wearing them out (and thus reducing maintenance costs). The brain stuff is at best speculative and not backed by any data (and in any event is a post hoc rationalization).

In general, readability tests (per the original article) have produced equivocal results which seem to show mainly that people prefer the fonts they grew up with.

> I can't wait until I can read the Economist online in the correct typeface.

It's possible, but with a lot of work. It's called EcoType. If you download a PDF of one of their "Special Reports" then you can use a font-extraction tool to generate a font file (possibly missing a few rare characters), then create a custom user style sheet for your browser that sets Economist.com body text to that typeface.

Whether it's worth it is a whole other question. ;)

Thankfully, the New Yorker just came out with their iPhone app which is typographically gorgeous.

The New Yorker does indeed use two custom typefaces -- Irvin for headings, and a Caslon variation for body text. (Wikipedia says it's Adobe Caslon, but I seem to recall it having been a customized version, at least at some point in the past.)

On the website, the New Yorker seems to be using Irvin for its headlines, but Times New Roman for body text.

There is nothing wrong with Verdana if used properly. Verdana was designed specifically for digital displays at small sizes, which is how it is used on daringfireball. And HN, actually.

I hope your right about the typographic future. This link argues that serifs are not more legible than sans serifs. http://alexpoole.info/blog/which-are-more-legible-serif-or-s...

Possibly because at 11px Verdana renders nicely. I guess at the time he came up with the design, there was not really an alternative to use CoreFonts, and this was one of the types that rendered fine at that size. FWIW headings are in Gill at 17px, and I don't find the balance unpleasant.

not to be too pedantic, but The New Yorker uses Caslon, which while gorgeous and second in my mind only to Garamond, is a rather old type face and is widely used because it is 1) very readable, and (possibly more importantly) 2) uses a lot less ink than other similar type faces

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