A sentence I wouldn't have expected to encounter today:
"A failure to really dig in to the buttcrack creates a bold spot, but even worse, it de-emphasizes the B-ness."
Sites like this are fun. I don't have the actual knowledge to tell if the commentary is insightful or informative but it's usually a good time when you get to look closely at something you take for granted.
you're not even mentioning the "can't get a finger in there!" text with the arrow that comes in above. i love it. it feels like humor is finally coming back again in the public discourse, and i'm here for it.
Not too long ago there was a submission of a font-editor[1] and I gave it a shot trying things out, just to realize, that my creations looked off and ugly, not really understanding why. This helps a lot. So much nuance to so many things....
As someone who has designed multiple type families, I might be biased, but this is wonderful. I'm going to send this to any aspiring type designers I meet, or anyone who's curious about what goes into shaping letters.
There's some great lyrics animations in a lot of their music videos[1] done by Rob Stenson using an open-source library he authored called Coldtype[2]. I played around with it a few years ago, it's quite neat. You can animate variable fonts with python, and even hook it into midi tracks and a lot more.
The designer obviously knows a thing or two. I enjoyed the fun presentation that others seem to dislike.
Where I ran into trouble was the readability of the annotations on the visuals. The tiny font combined with the low contrast was too much for me. I found myself squinting and trying to get close to my monitor. Eventually I had to move on, even though I was enjoying the content.
In visual design, it is things that occupy space. The areas left unoccupied by things are called negative space.
So if you hang a massive painting, that painting takes up positive space. The parts of the wall that are not covered by that painting make up the negative space.
I've just never encountered a situation where that's a necessary distinction. If I say "the painting takes up too much space on the wall" I don't need to say "the painting has too much positive space" nor "the painting removes too much negative space".
Communities don't generally invent jargon for no reason, and a lot of things that people see as gatekeeping and shibboleths are just terms that save a lot of time in communication between people who know what they mean.
If you are a programmer, terms like "imperative" or "declarative" are extremely opaque to outsiders, but convey a lot of information efficiently if you know what they mean.
"Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting."
Yes, sites that don't work on your device are annoying—but uninteresting, offtopic, irritable threads are the closer-to-home annoyance here.
Please don't let the comments deter you from giving the site a try! Ok navigation is finicky on mobile but this isn't a blog post, it's quirky, I find the humor funny and the subject matter deserves some artistic liberty on the presentation side
Sorry—I feel bad about moving this one because you were on the downhill (good!) side of the contrarian dynamic (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45542904), but the subthread mostly reverted to the uphill (bad!) side, in keeping with this sequence of sadness:
1. objections
2. objection to the objections (<-- you were here)
3. objections to the objection to the objections
...so it veered further off topic. (and yes I suppose my comment here is a 4-th order objection)
I use NoScript on desktop and was confronted with a complete jumble of words overlaying each other, each individual piece apparently word salad. I can't even understand what the intended purpose of the page is. My best guess is that it's trying to demonstrate a font... ?
This is kind of a seminal resource for a lot of new type-designers. This appearing on hn only for everyone to moan about how the mobile site is lacking kinda makes me feel like I should spend less time on here
Don't despair! Threads, in their early stage, are subject to a contrarian dynamic. Fortunately this usually (often? sometimes?) gets corrected, as it did in this case.
I wouldn’t expect nuanced takes on typography from HN. As a long time user the comments are entirely expected - and actually skew more positive than I would have guessed. Respectfully.
It is too annoying to carefully scroll to the small ranges at which texts are visible, with a custom horizontal scroll, to fish out small bits of text, which do not even seem to be written well. And that is after enabling JS, without which it is broken, yet not obviously (not much more than with JS). Websites about design and typography tend to be broken and illegible, but this one seems to stand out even among those.
But as with quite a few of other such websites, disabling CSS actually renders it easily legible and navigable, even without JS.
I do find this kind of analysis fascinating, and yet (personal choice in creative outputs aside) I also find what seems to be the increased use of swearing in blog posts/website copy to be, frankly, lazy.
"Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting."
Its not even just mobile. Scrolling down on my desktop using the scroll wheel... Page goes down, then right, then down. I find it disorienting and completely turns me away from the site. I've seen it before and every time, it's a net negative to the site in question; sometimes a lot.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that the author does not in fact specialise in web design, and thus its quite expected that when they do something unusual that it won't work for some portion of the audience.
This could have easily been a youtube short or whatever 'vine offshoot' is your particular favourite flavour.
On one hand, videos are terrible for accessibility. On the other hand, by being a website, in theory this stands a better shot. And yet, someone on a mobile phone probably has a much worse experience trying to consume this content than the equivalent as a series of shorts, one for each letter.
I don't know what conclusions we are meant to draw. I just found it an interesting realisation.
This page works beautifully in my iPhone. As I scroll down, the content slides and animates. I actually came here to say that I’m stunned that this effect can be good in mobile, only to find out your comment :D
A sentence I wouldn't have expected to encounter today:
Sites like this are fun. I don't have the actual knowledge to tell if the commentary is insightful or informative but it's usually a good time when you get to look closely at something you take for granted.
It's a very colorful way to describe the phenomenon, but it is a real problem with the "Y" part of the B.
you're not even mentioning the "can't get a finger in there!" text with the arrow that comes in above. i love it. it feels like humor is finally coming back again in the public discourse, and i'm here for it.
Not too long ago there was a submission of a font-editor[1] and I gave it a shot trying things out, just to realize, that my creations looked off and ugly, not really understanding why. This helps a lot. So much nuance to so many things....
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45347072
As someone who has designed multiple type families, I might be biased, but this is wonderful. I'm going to send this to any aspiring type designers I meet, or anyone who's curious about what goes into shaping letters.
Ooh, recognize this domain!
Oh No created the official typeface for one of my favorite bands, Vulfpeck
https://ohnotype.co/fonts/vulf
There's some great lyrics animations in a lot of their music videos[1] done by Rob Stenson using an open-source library he authored called Coldtype[2]. I played around with it a few years ago, it's quite neat. You can animate variable fonts with python, and even hook it into midi tracks and a lot more.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2_CJ_nx-l4
[2] https://github.com/coldtype/coldtype
Bonus link, Rob also did the visual for this video, hooking into midi tracks to visualize a synth cover of a Bach fugue
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJfiOuDdetg
Did not expect Sesame Street for fonts. Excellent.
This is pretty great. Might have been better to see before my typeface layperson's implementation of these guys: https://letterspractice.com/dbg/lp
(note: root site not actually ready for publish. don't click too many things or you could ruin my life (mostly a joke about the ruination))
(2020), check https://ohnotype.co/blog/tagged/teaching for letters other than A.
Also by this guy: Futurefonts.com Lots of great cheap in-progress fonts with documentation of the process of creating them.
Not the type theory we wanted, but the type theory we needed.
It's very interactive and pretty!
The designer obviously knows a thing or two. I enjoyed the fun presentation that others seem to dislike.
Where I ran into trouble was the readability of the annotations on the visuals. The tiny font combined with the low contrast was too much for me. I found myself squinting and trying to get close to my monitor. Eventually I had to move on, even though I was enjoying the content.
> What we want is a balance between the top and bottom negative spaces.
One thing I never understand is why they say "negative spaces" instead of just "spaces".
In visual design, it is things that occupy space. The areas left unoccupied by things are called negative space.
So if you hang a massive painting, that painting takes up positive space. The parts of the wall that are not covered by that painting make up the negative space.
I've just never encountered a situation where that's a necessary distinction. If I say "the painting takes up too much space on the wall" I don't need to say "the painting has too much positive space" nor "the painting removes too much negative space".
5 replies →
I guess one reason is that adding "negative" turns the generic noun "space" into a specific term of art. A shibboleth, if you will.
Communities don't generally invent jargon for no reason, and a lot of things that people see as gatekeeping and shibboleths are just terms that save a lot of time in communication between people who know what they mean.
If you are a programmer, terms like "imperative" or "declarative" are extremely opaque to outsiders, but convey a lot of information efficiently if you know what they mean.
1 reply →
I agree.
[stub for offtopicness]
All: please note this from https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html:
"Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting."
Yes, sites that don't work on your device are annoying—but uninteresting, offtopic, irritable threads are the closer-to-home annoyance here.
Please don't let the comments deter you from giving the site a try! Ok navigation is finicky on mobile but this isn't a blog post, it's quirky, I find the humor funny and the subject matter deserves some artistic liberty on the presentation side
Sorry—I feel bad about moving this one because you were on the downhill (good!) side of the contrarian dynamic (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45542904), but the subthread mostly reverted to the uphill (bad!) side, in keeping with this sequence of sadness:
...so it veered further off topic. (and yes I suppose my comment here is a 4-th order objection)
Its notable that on desktop, the navigation is excellent. Custom navigation is rarely great, but this fits the content so well.
11 replies →
I use NoScript on desktop and was confronted with a complete jumble of words overlaying each other, each individual piece apparently word salad. I can't even understand what the intended purpose of the page is. My best guess is that it's trying to demonstrate a font... ?
3 replies →
This is kind of a seminal resource for a lot of new type-designers. This appearing on hn only for everyone to moan about how the mobile site is lacking kinda makes me feel like I should spend less time on here
Don't despair! Threads, in their early stage, are subject to a contrarian dynamic. Fortunately this usually (often? sometimes?) gets corrected, as it did in this case.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
1 reply →
I wouldn’t expect nuanced takes on typography from HN. As a long time user the comments are entirely expected - and actually skew more positive than I would have guessed. Respectfully.
Ridiculous scroll jacking on mobile. Sure it's quirky but it's also so disorienting I gave up.
Imagine taking design advice from someone doing _that_ to scrolling.
It is too annoying to carefully scroll to the small ranges at which texts are visible, with a custom horizontal scroll, to fish out small bits of text, which do not even seem to be written well. And that is after enabling JS, without which it is broken, yet not obviously (not much more than with JS). Websites about design and typography tend to be broken and illegible, but this one seems to stand out even among those.
But as with quite a few of other such websites, disabling CSS actually renders it easily legible and navigable, even without JS.
I do find this kind of analysis fascinating, and yet (personal choice in creative outputs aside) I also find what seems to be the increased use of swearing in blog posts/website copy to be, frankly, lazy.
Great content, terrible form.
[flagged]
"Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting."
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Its not even just mobile. Scrolling down on my desktop using the scroll wheel... Page goes down, then right, then down. I find it disorienting and completely turns me away from the site. I've seen it before and every time, it's a net negative to the site in question; sometimes a lot.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that the author does not in fact specialise in web design, and thus its quite expected that when they do something unusual that it won't work for some portion of the audience.
It works fine on some mobiles.
I tried scrolling right and left and reloaded the page a couple times.
Turns out scrolling down is translated to scrolling left.
It works well for me on mobile
This could have easily been a youtube short or whatever 'vine offshoot' is your particular favourite flavour.
On one hand, videos are terrible for accessibility. On the other hand, by being a website, in theory this stands a better shot. And yet, someone on a mobile phone probably has a much worse experience trying to consume this content than the equivalent as a series of shorts, one for each letter.
I don't know what conclusions we are meant to draw. I just found it an interesting realisation.
It's not immediately intuitive but hardly unusable. Reminds me of apple.com (and that's not a compliment).
This page works beautifully in my iPhone. As I scroll down, the content slides and animates. I actually came here to say that I’m stunned that this effect can be good in mobile, only to find out your comment :D
2 replies →
swiped to scroll down. page scrolled right. did not appreciate