Hot answers tagged typography
29
I believe high contrast such as black on white can cause eye strain. Also there is evidence that it is particularly bad for people with dyslexia. For further info:
http://uxmovement.com/content/6-surprising-bad-practices-that-hurt-dyslexic-users/
http://www.dyslexiacentre.co.uk/dyslexia.htm
WCAG provide details on what is acceptable colour contrast, but ...
19
For two main reasons,according to Microsoft posted 3 days ago:
We’ve chosen to use uppercase styling in the top menu for two main reasons: 1) to keep Visual Studio consistent with the direction of other Microsoft user experiences, and 2) to provide added structure to the top menu bar area.
On the first point, the use of uppercase text is becoming a ...
14
I believe the cause is that handwriting generally has a higher x-height than printed type.
That makes all-caps handwriting look more like printed small-caps, which are generally not considered rude, and actually end up looking formal.
It's also true that all-caps used on the web now carries the connotation of screaming by convention (as mentioned by Juan ...
13
Caps are an effective way of introducing visual hierarchy without increasing point size or using bold. All-caps can make small text seem more important or conceptually higher in the hierarchy than larger text.
Metro, being highly typographic, requires designers have a significant degree of freedom to express visual hierarchy without resorting to colour or ...
13
My guess would be that it's so the text renders consistently across all browsers. Not all browsers support font face. So images are the only way to have full control of the experience.
Many of the visitors to that page might have a old PC. So rather that risking having the page destroyed by improper rendering they show an image. So that the site conveys ...
10
Thought this was funny ... someone has already created a hack to turn the visual studio ALL CAPS Menus back into lowercase. (I realise Microsoft have said they will expose this functionality themselves... but this demonstrates someone with a level of urgency).
The point here is that many people really find ALL CAPS hard to read and/or aesthetically painful ...
10
All capital handwriting is easier to read because it takes more time to write and forces the author to slow down. This increases legibility by requiring the writer to compose each individual letter one at a time. The variations for capital letters are less compared to lower case or cursive characters. Architects and engineers developed their particular ...
9
Caps are more difficult to read.
This is because all letters have the same height, requiring some additional scrutiny to recognize each word (we read word by word, not letter by letter).
So you can use caps to EMPHASIZE a short heading, but if you use it all along the text your readers might quit reading early because of the additional effort, i.e., slower ...
7
For the most part the pros/cons of this come back to the classic Adaptive vs Adaptable interface argument, where Adaptive interfaces automatically adjust based on user interaction, and adaptable interfaces allow users to manually tweak them.
A problem with this in particular is that text size is an accessibility issue. Not everyone has the same eyes, so ...
7
Apple's corporate font is Myriad. Myriad is probably prohibitively expensive for someone at the scale of Apple to license to serve on their web site. Also, Apple probably doesn't want to pay Adobe tons of money just to support its design decisions for its marketing websites. Also it makes the site faster with less to download.
As for accessibility; the ...
6
There are probably legacy reasons for this decision that should be considered, but there are at least a few reasonable explanations that I can think of:
Images allow complete control over typographical details such as tracking, kerning, ligatures and contextual alternates
CSS doesn't provide any author control over kerning or contextual alternates, very ...
6
There is a very similar question on Graphic Design - StackExchange, Is ampersand allowed at the beginning of line?, and here is the best answer:
There is a typographic recommendation to place connector words like
"and" or "or" at the end of the line, not at the beginning of the new
line. This helps to better connect the previous line to the next.
...
5
Manual line wrapping stems from the old days when editors were more "line based" and had no WYSIWIG features. You had to take care of formatting the text yourself. This meant manual line endings and adding empty lines to separate paragraphs.
With the advent of automatic line wrapping (and better/quicker) hyphenation to support it, life for text editor users ...
5
What is macrotypography anyway? Is there a microtypography?
The difference between microtypography and macrotypography is that the former deals primarly with the individual fonts or even characters, while the latter is focused on the broader page layout.
Reference: Macrotypography of a Web Page (Paris Web 2010)
Macrotypography is all about how ...
5
You should strive for consistency whatever you do. There's two relevant types of consistency: consistency with the operating system and internal consistency within your application(s).
If you want to keep consistent with the platform's look and feel; this means stuff like using Segoe UI on Windows/Windows Phone and Helveteca Neue on retina iOS. However ...
5
A good designer knows the rules. A great designer knows when the rules can or should be broken. And if you can justify it, then go for it.
UX certainly allows for more mysterious paths and interfaces. It's the exception, rather than the norm, but if you can justify the exception, go for it.
A mini-critique of your sample: The ampersand should be removed. ...
3
I particularly like Open Sans, "especially designed for legibility across print, web, and mobile interfaces."
But a few days ago Adobe released Source Sans Pro, it might be worth a try.
The primary need for type in Adobe’s open source applications has thus
far been for usage within user interfaces. A second environment of
perennial interest to Adobe ...
3
In general, UX is not about artistic self-expression, but about users.
You can try to use scriptio continua for an aesthetic effect, however, I'd recommend using it only for title text, as people will have a hard time each time they try to actually navigate the page.
It's simple: navigation will not only be read, but it is to be used as signposts as well. ...
3
I recommend reading this smashing magazine article which gives a good introduction to Microtypography.To quote the article
Microtypography has to do with the details; setting the right glyph,
getting the appropriate kerning and tracking, and making stylistic
choices such as when to use small-caps. Micro techniques have received
a lot of attention ...
3
Your content will have its own tone, rhythm and meaning. One of the main jobs of typography is to help bring this out.
As kontur stated "it requires a visual eye and is always context-dependent". While it is true that the final choice should come down to your specific example typography is quite an old art and has a lot of guidlines.
While there are no ...
1
The problem with your design is, way too bold text , very dark shadows plus colors are not that awesome try FlatUI colors
Moreover head over to Dribble(tag flat ui) you can find a ton of UI design inspirations there.
1
It will depend on the length of the title. You're touching on Widows and orphans, where you end up with one word on their own at the end of a paragraph. Shaun Inmam wrote a WordPress plugin to prevent 'widows' - which he claims are for single words on their own at the end of the line, but Wikipedia calls them orphans:
A word, part of a word, or very ...
1
As a tech demo it suggests many benefits. Most of the answers here seem to be concentrating on the negative impacts of what happens when you bring the device closer to yourself, thereby decreasing the fontsize, but I believe the benefits of this system are when you come at it from the other direction - how to present content to users viewing it where their ...
1
I think this kind of thing creates more problems than it solves. On web UIs I assume the user has set the browser font size to a comfortable size for general reading. I use the user set font for the bulk of the text content, i.e. the main reading font. Other font sizes used on the site are derived from the user set font (that is set with units of *em*s or ...
1
I am working on an interface with these exact concerns. We want something very clear and optimized at small sizes, yet have it be a bit different from the default and specified in our app for consistency across platforms.
Open Sans seemed a great choice, I really love the modern look, however I found a big problem (at least with open sans served by google ...
1
Bad eyes like characters made with pen strokes of uniform width, like Arial or the one developed by the American Printing House for the Blind, I think it is called APHont
I have seen that serif fonts are not good, but I think it has nothing to do with the serifs. To my old eyes the fine curved strokes that go between strong verticals are invisible, ...
1
1) is their any reference for standardization for reports?
Edward Tufte's work is a good place to start to learn about what works and doesn't work when it comes to visualizing data. He won't give you a standard, but his work can form the basis for one.
2) if not, then , what are the factors for standardizing the same?
Well, I think in your case, ...
1
Here's an interesting piece on this: Design Tip: Never Use Black
It's not a study, but I found that interesting. The thinking is that in real world thing's aren't really black on really white and that it didn't matter some time ago, but now the displays have such high contrast that pure black on white just isn't good for you.
1
Some years ago, like by 1998 or 1999, one would look at the pixel size (termed dot pitch) when purchasing a monitor.
As of today's standards (and let alone those Retina displays) pixels then were quite big.
For example monitors were of the VGA kind, sporting 640 pixels horizontally. The usual size was 14".
Now screens in notebooks are about 14" too, but ...
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