*
programming and human factors
by Jeff Atwood
*
Over the christmas break, my wife and I visited New York City for the first time. One of the many highlights of our trip was the Museum of Modern Art, which is running a year-long special exhibit, 50 Years of Helvetica. It's a tiny exhibit tucked away in a corner of MoMA. Blink and you'll miss it amongst all the other wonderful art. But even a small exhibit provides ample physical evidence that Helvetica-- a humble font, nothing more than a collection of mathematical curves shaped into letterforms-- had a huge impact on the world.
Helvetica is so highly regarded in the design world there's a full length documentary on the topic: Helvetica the Movie.
Another little-known fact about Helvetica is the relationship between this timeless classic and another font you've almost certainly encountered before: Arial. John Gruber explains:
Helvetica is perhaps the most popular typeface in the world, and is widely acclaimed as one of the best. Arial is a tawdry, inferior knock-off of Helvetica, but which, to the detriment of the world, Microsoft chose to license for Windows simply because it was cheaper. Because Arial is a default Windows font and Helvetica is not, it is ubiquitous. Mark Simonson's "The Scourge of Arial" is an excellent resource on both Arial's history and its typographic deficiencies; his accompanying sidebar is an excellent primer on the specific differences between Arial and Helvetica.
You do have to be something of a font geek to appreciate the subtle differences between Helvetica and Arial, much less Helvetica and its precursor, Grotesk. But the discussion leads directly to another hugely important twenty-first century problem: how do you copyright the completely abstract, pure intellectual property that is a font?
All computer geeks tend to fall in love with typography at some point in their careers. Donald Knuth is a fine example; frustrated with the limited typesetting options available for his books in the late 70's, Knuth went on a "brief hiatus" to come up with something better. Seven years later, he unleashed TeX upon the world.
In 1977, Knuth halted research on his books for what he expected to be a one-year hiatus. Instead, it took 10. Accompanied by Jill, Knuth took design classes from Stanford art professor Matthew Kahn. Knuth, trying to train his programmer's brain to think like an artist's, wanted to create a program that would understand why each stroke in a typeface would be pleasing to the eye. "I wanted to try to capture the intelligence of the design, not just the outcome of the design," he says. For example, how do you insert line breaks into a paragraph so there isn't too much space between words and so that most of the lines don't end in hyphens? Although this seems like an aesthetic challenge to be solved by human taste, Knuth says, computers do it well. "This is a combinatorial problem," he explains. "There might be a thousand ways to break a paragraph into lines and each way has a score." His solution was to build a computer program capable of ranking the thousand options and picking the best one.
Typography and fonts are a rare and vital intersection point between software engineers and designers. And there's absolutely no better book on the topic than Thinking with Type: A Critical Guide for Designers, Writers, Editors, & Students. I recommend it without hesitation to all of the above, and certainly to software engineers with even the slightest passing interest in typography.
Like all great books, it teaches you "why", not "how":
This is not a book about fonts. It is a book about how to use them. Typefaces are an essential resource employed by graphic designers, just as glass, stone, steel, and countless other materials are employed by architects. Graphic designers sometimes create their own fonts and custom lettering. More commonly, however, they tap the vast library of existing typefaces, choosing and combining them in response to a particular audience or situation. To do this with wit and wisdom requires knowledge of how-- and why-- letterforms have evolved.
I think I can trace my initial interest in fonts way, way back to the pirate crack credit screens on Apple // software I encountered as a wayward teenager.
I count four fonts on this crack screen. There were countless disk sets of these low-resolution bitmap fonts to choose from. Even back in the mid-80s, these primitive fonts added a particular style, a feeling, an intonation to the text-- and we only had a dismal little 280 x 192 screen to work with. How wonderfully liberating it must feel to have thousands of RGB anti-aliased pixels to render beautiful fonts with today, much less the millions we'll eventually have.
I count at least five fonts in that Apple // screenshot:
* The words "Cracked by"
* The words "apple mafia"
* The words "High technology..."
* The list of contributors
* The list of games in the bottom frame
It's just a nit, though. I have only a passing interest in typography per se, but I've done something that only the most hardcore font geeks usually do: written a font in Metafont.
JS Bangs on January 16, 2008 11:18 PMHmm.. Helvetica is indeed superior to Arial.
"Microsoft chose to license for Windows simply because it was cheaper"
OMG.. I thought Bill Gates was the richest person in the whole world.
Niyaz: Even so, businesses still look for the cheapest options. In this case, it leaves us with an inferior default font.
Matthew on January 16, 2008 11:45 PMOh, I didn't get rich by writing a lot of cheques!
Bill Gates on January 16, 2008 11:46 PMTypefaces are the gateway drug of typography. It starts with fonts, then you'll be hand kerning and eventually you'll be up all night with grids and vertical rhythm and column width. Be careful, kids.
Josh on January 17, 2008 12:30 AMYou can't copyright the look of a font. However, you can copyright the code that does the hinting of a font (which is indeed a small computer program), and you can copyright the spline points for the vector that defines the glyph.
If you redraw the glyphs from scratch, it is perfectly legal.
Sean on January 17, 2008 12:33 AMThose aren't games in the bottom frame--it's a list of bulletin board systems and their phone numbers that you can call with your 300 baud modem. While paying long distance fees.
tacodog on January 17, 2008 1:03 AM"Oh, I didn't get rich by writing a lot of cheques!"
Simpsons For The Win! :)
yossi on January 17, 2008 1:18 AMYep, the crackers had a long-standing impact on the way we use fonts, and the all-known electronic plimp-plomp techno midi music that could be found at the beginning of every cracked game or in every trainer.
I think we owe those guys a lot.
Jakub "Kocureq" Anderwald on January 17, 2008 1:26 AMThose crackers and their plimp-plomp techno still exist...
The plimp plomp side of things http://www.pouet.net/
Helvetica is better than Arial but let's face it, both are pretty damn ugly. So are Times and Courier. There's a reason why these were the freebie fonts that came with every system (Windows, Mac, PostScript printers): anyone serious about typesetting would immediately go out and by some real typefaces.
Today, thanks to rampant font piracy and excessive font bundling, most computer users probably have decent fonts on their systems, but people who don't use PDF with embedded fonts or who just don't know any better are still uglifying the world with the original terror trio of free fonts.
If you cherish your readers, please don't ever use Arial, Helvetica or Times -- use proper typefaces like Garamond, Minion, Myriad, Optima instead! Or even Microsoft's newer web fonts like Lucida and Georgia. Times is for cheap newspapers, and Helvetica/Arial is for station signs.
Chris Nahr on January 17, 2008 2:16 AMI just recently found "Kinetic Typography":
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~johnny/kt/
>Helvetica is better than Arial but let's face it, both are pretty damn ugly. So are Times and
>Courier. ... If you cherish your readers, please don't ever use Arial, Helvetica or Times -- use
>proper typefaces like Garamond, Minion, Myriad, Optima instead! Or even Microsoft's newer
>web fonts like Lucida and Georgia. Times is for cheap newspapers, and Helvetica/Arial is for
>station signs.
Can't agree with you there. Times doesn't look that good on a screen, true, but it was never designed to -- as a newspaper body font, it is well-designed, and most certainly a "proper typeface" (and possibly The Times, founded 1785 as the UK's newspaper of record and which commissioned Times Roman in 1931, would take umbrage at being referred to as a "cheap newspaper"...).
The typeface which you suggest to use instead, Georgia, is actually a very similar font indeed to Times in terms of letterforms, except that its serifs were designed as to fit the pixel grid and it's much more extensively hinted for low font sizes; which is why it looks much better on-screen. (It works the other way as well -- fonts which were designed purely to look good on the screen, e.g. Verdana, often look like crap on paper).
Simon on January 17, 2008 2:50 AMI too am a huge font geek, despite being terrible at design, I still love working with fonts. So I greatly appreciated the post. That book looks great!
@Chris Nahr:
"Helvetica/Arial is for station signs"
Arial is for too-cheap-to-afford-a-designer corporate stationery. Helvetica, on the other hand, is *everywhere*. Microsoft's logo, for example. (I was going to say Coding Horror's logo too, but on closer inspection I think that's Univers)
Dan on January 17, 2008 2:56 AMAs well as Arial, there are other Helvetica knockoffs, like the venerable Apple 'Geneva', and Bitstream's 'Swiss' family.
Roddy on January 17, 2008 2:58 AM@Simon:
Yeah verdana and tahoma both have huge x-heights, and are ugly as hell in print (Georgia has an increased x-height too, but it's at least vaguely readable in print).
My favorite font for web pages is Verdana. Cambria is a great choice for the default font for Word 2007 and Vista.
Josh Hurley on January 17, 2008 3:15 AMNiyaz: I'm pretty sure that Mr. Gates wasn't the richest person in the world when Arial starting appearing in Windows. That was in version... 3.0? 3.1?
Powerlord on January 17, 2008 4:21 AM"Helvetica" is a great documentary with a ton of insightful commentary, especially in the bonus section where the whole interviews with the designers interviewed for the documentary are shown. Interestingly (and probably intentionally), many of the logos and signs in the movie don't show Helvetica, but Arial, or a similar Helvetica clone.
LKM on January 17, 2008 4:48 AMFor the gold standard in books on typography, pick up "The Elements of Typographic Style" by Robert Bringhurst.
Niklas on January 17, 2008 5:10 AM"My favorite font for web pages is Verdana."
Ditto.
Brent on January 17, 2008 5:19 AM@Sean:
Please be careful when making comments on legal issues. The law on fonts and copyright is different in, say, the US vs. most of Europe.
How to get rich:
Make an operating system. Don't buy a good font for it. Use a free similar looking font instead. You will become rich from the savings of not licensing the font.
What?! Nobody mentioned Comic Sans?! Or Century Gothic?! :) But this article is starting an interesting discussion. I'll be checking back.
PaulG. on January 17, 2008 5:39 AMOnly you Jeff can turn a post about fonts into something worth reading... :)
I fancy Georgia on the web in clean layouts, Times in busy layouts, Bookman Old for the 'Old Spice' in me, and Courier New/10 Pitch when coding. Can you tell a lot about someone's personality by the font they prefer?
Patrick on January 17, 2008 6:18 AMI hope this is on a top 10 reasons to hate Microsoft list.
Matt on January 17, 2008 6:28 AMArial first appeared in Windows 3.1, when Microsoft added support for TrueType. At the time they wanted to license fonts to ship with *every* copy of Windows--a high-volume, low-fee strategy that was at odds with how the font industry worked at the time. (At the time, I believe a single font might have sold for $250 per user, which is more than the cost of Windows.) I believe Monotype was the only company willing to license fonts to Microsoft on those terms, which is why you have Arial instead of Helvetica.
Incidentally, Times New Roman, like most modern serif fonts, is derived from a script developed by the Holy Roman Empire around 800 CE, which added lower-case letter to Roman capitals (which were themselves far older).
James on January 17, 2008 6:36 AMHelvetica is a crappy typeface. Print out a lower case 'a' so it fills a 8.5 x 11 page, put it on the wall and look at it carefully -- it's full of flaws.
Helvetica is also devoid of commercial value because it's the official typeface of the IRS. Americans subliminally associate it with pain, just like baby boomer associate disco with Watergate, inflation, and burning up two gallons of gas waiting in line to fill your tank.
Masked Bandit on January 17, 2008 6:40 AMIncidentally, the Stendig Calendar is set in Helvetica and looks beautiful. (Helvetica's numerals are nice.)
James on January 17, 2008 6:41 AMMy favorite font for web pages is Times New Roman. Verdana is a best choice for the default font for Word 2007 and Vista.
stan on January 17, 2008 6:48 AMAdd Colin Wheildon's "Type and Layout," co-authored by advertising legend David Ogilvy, to the classic works on type and design. Arial for text? Turns out to be not quite such a good idea as a million engineers and Internet looky-loos imagine.
runbei on January 17, 2008 6:50 AMATDT 19143591517
Ringing...
Ringing...
Ringing...
Connected at 1200 Baud
-=>> WELCOME TO THE SHERWOOD FOREST ][ <<=-
+++
ATH
NO CARRIER
"helvetica vs arial..." how does that affect the end user? not a damn thing. because Picard clearly wins.
jin on January 17, 2008 7:05 AMMake it so, Number 1.
gunther on January 17, 2008 7:13 AM>Verdana is a best choice for the default font for Word 2007 and Vista.
No, Verdana is a terrible choice of default font for Word 2007, because although it's very readable on screen, it look rubbish on paper (as I and Dan have said in previous comments).
Luckily, it *isn't* the default for either Word 2007 or Vista. Nor is, as Josh Hurley claims, Cambria (for either). The actual default font in Word 2007 is Calibri, which is a rounded, sans-serif typeface designed to look nice both on page and in print (Cambria is indeed the default font for headings).
The interface font Vista uses is different from all of these, and is called Segoe UI; it is a humanist font reminiscent of Frutiger.
Simon on January 17, 2008 7:19 AMI estimate I have saved at least 3 hours of my life because Arial is right at the top of the font selection list box and I would have had to scroll down 300 fonts to select the H's ....
Thanks Bill!
Davide on January 17, 2008 7:20 AMCodingFontTobi or Proggy FTW if you code!
rustyvz on January 17, 2008 7:27 AMDavide,
That is a good point. But what if Helvetica was the default font?
Then you would have to scroll up 300 fonts select the A's.
If you are so much worried, you could type instead of scrolling.
Or else you could uninstall some fonts. Fonts eat up your RAM and they reduce the start up speed of your computer.
If you have 300 fonts between A and H, I (smartly :p ) calculated that you would have about 1114 fonts in your computer!!!
What is that? A font-server?
Thinking With Type is indeed an awesome book and a great starting point for anybody who is interested in typography. Helvetica Neue rendered in Safari 3 on OS X 10.5 is bliss. ;-)
Carsten on January 17, 2008 7:40 AMWingdings - The Movie
How Bill Gates got rich and the NYC conspiracy.
Can't wait.
Helvetica itself is an imitation of the Folio typeface. Folio was
a product of Hell (A german typsetting company, before they got
bought by Linotype).
Monotype made Helevetica somewhat uglier than Folio in order
to avoid having to pay royalities to Hell. Since Monotype
was more successful in the market, Folio was forgotten.
(BTW: "Hell" is just a last name in Germany, which in that language
also has the meaning "light" - not "Heck")
</hair_splitting>
When I print stuff, it tends to look the same on paper as it does on screen. Can someone who studies this stuff explain briefly what I'm missing?
Dave on January 17, 2008 8:01 AMI wonder if those BBS numbers are still active. Let me pull out my 300 baud AppleTalk modem and my Apple ][e and dial them up.
Billkamm on January 17, 2008 8:13 AMBrings back old memories, seeing those apple screens, back in the day of the bbs scene.
Good times, good memories...
Craig M. Rosenblum on January 17, 2008 8:13 AMI remember back when I was in iCE doing ansi advertisements for BBSes my font skills were so bad I'd almost always have to get other people to do the font portion for me.
engtech on January 17, 2008 8:32 AMSorry... I'm pretty loyal to Verdana and Georgia.
Both look VERY nice both large and small (although Verdana does lose some charm when blown up much more than about 14 pt)
wes on January 17, 2008 8:53 AMI'm highly skeptical of that "Scourge of Arial" article and the claims that Microsoft chose Arial for Windows 3.1 because Arial cost less than Helvetica.
First of all, the article merely states that Microsoft chose Arial "probably because it was cheaper" -- no evidence, no facts, not even any certainty. But later in the article this unsubstantiated "probable" is presented as truth, that Arial's success "born out of the desire to avoid paying license fees".
Second of all, to "James" who commented below on January 17, 2008 06:36 AM, how is the way Microsoft wanted to license the fonts any different from the way Apple wanted to license the fonts? Your argument that $250 per copy of Windows is too expensive (certainly it is) is unconvincing when we consider that $250 per Macintosh would also have been ridiculous: the Mac Classic was only $1000, and upgrading to System 7, which included Helvetica as a TrueType font, was only $100. So how is Helvetica too expensive for Windows 3.1 (original retail price, $150) but not for Apple System 7 ($100, or included with $1000 Mac Classic boxes after May 1991)?
I'm not saying that Microsoft *didn't* choose Arial because it was cheaper, I'm just saying that nobody's presented any valid evidence for this supposed "fact". There are lots of other reasons Microsoft may have chosen Arial over Helvetica; maybe they had a better relationship with Monotype, maybe Monotype pushed harder to sell their stuff to Microsoft, maybe Monotype offered them a package deal on a bunch of fonts, I don't know. Price may be a reasonable explanation, but until someone offers up some actual evidence, I'm not buying it.
Tim G. on January 17, 2008 8:59 AMFor a little font fun, take the Arial or Helvetica quiz:
http://www.iliveonyourvisits.com/helvetica/#
The Coding Horror banner appears to be in Frutiger Black. Nice choice.
Trebuchet is one Microsoft font that manages to look good on both screen and paper.
I miss the old custom-made crack installers with their uber-midi techno songs.
Mattkins on January 17, 2008 9:25 AMAs I remember it, Microsoft didn't choose Helvetica because they couldn't get an open-ended license - they would have had to pay a royalty for every copy of Windows sold, and that was unacceptable. I wish I could find the reference to back me up, but both my memory and Google are failing me today.
Mark Ransom on January 17, 2008 9:33 AMQuite a lot of graphic designers see Helvetica as a boring and safe choice. I even heard that some cv's are critised for using helvetica - such a harsh world!
Mike on January 17, 2008 9:37 AM...but your own stylesheet says:
font-family:calibri,tahoma,arial,sans-serif
Where's Helvetica?
David Good on January 17, 2008 9:49 AMHey, how do you pronounce Helvetica, anyway?
Some dude on January 17, 2008 9:56 AMLike it's spelled. Hel-vet-i-ca.
Anonymous Cowherd on January 17, 2008 10:19 AMFont snobs. Seriously, it's microsoft so it has to be terrible, right? Certainly they got rich by screwing you, right?? The facts are that if you read the article that this blog links to (http://www.ms-studio.com/articles.html) , the uber-font freak says :
"This is not such a big deal since at the low resolution
of a computer screen, it might as well be Helvetica"
That's not me writing that, it's the same freak that has his movie experience ruined because of a serif on the 'i' of a sign in the back of a street scene that gives away it's a font from 1978 instead of a nearly identical one from 1957. (http://www.ms-studio.com/typecasting.html)
ulric on January 17, 2008 10:58 AMNice read indeed. I'm glad I haven't seen comic sans pop up anywhere in the comments! hah, Helvetica is a very solid font, I gained alot of respect for it over the past few monthes. When I first started design for the web, I thought Verdana was a pretty solid font. However on print, it is poor on the eyes. It also doesn't seem to break right for me.
My recent font of love, is Courier New. It makes me feel like an elite coder when I read it. haha
Corey on January 17, 2008 11:45 AMMaybe they did "cheap out" when they picked Arial as the default sans serif font for Windows. Boo hoo. Until someone invents a time machine there isn't anything anyone can do about that. But they've been making attempts to correct that mistake for some time:
http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=54974
http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=146749
You may not like the new fonts, but Microsoft appears to be spending a pile of money designing new ones. And others seem to agree that the new fonts are pretty good:
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/links/news.aspx?NID=5816
Outside of those links, Bill Hill has some very interesting things to say on other subjects as well:
http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=112
http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=114
http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=4295
Now all the Microsoft haters who were arguing "Microsoft doesn't care about good typography!" can switch to arguing "They're just trying to drive all the other font vendors out of business with their own fonts! They're evvvvvvvvil!"
What's so funny about these hate-filled opinions is that Bill Hill doesn't strike me as "evil" in any way, shape or form. He seems to be genuinely interested in producing the best quality product for Microsoft's customers. But that can't be, he works for Microsoft, so it must all be an act...
Grant on January 17, 2008 12:06 PMThe default is fine.
Courier? Fine.
Times New Roman? Fine.
Seriously.
mynameishere on January 17, 2008 12:10 PMThe ice cream man in my neighborhood has his company name and info hand-painted on his truck, and he uses at least 5 fonts.
Steve on January 17, 2008 12:49 PMI'm surprised nobody remembers this website:
Ban Comic Sans - they even sell t-shirts
http://bancomicsans.com/home.html
Great post. Helvetica has always looked a bit mushy onscreen for me. It's true that at some agencies there is a distinct push to move designers away from Helvetica. A lot of clients won't accept work with Helvetica either, because they think it looks too "normal" and the knee jerk reaction is too make their project totally "original".
Daniel on January 17, 2008 1:41 PMThat cracktro was mostly likely created with Fontrix. Interestingly, Folio was one of the typefaces available. Most of the other typefaces appeared to have been introduced in the 60s or 70s.
@EdeVau: Helvetica and Folio were introduced around the same time. Both of these typefaces were inspired by Akzidenz Grotesk.
John on January 17, 2008 1:43 PMGreat post. Helvetica has always looked a bit mushy onscreen for me. It's true that at some agencies there is a distinct push to move designers away from Helvetica. A lot of clients won't accept work with Helvetica either, because they think it looks too "normal" and the knee jerk reaction is too make their project totally "original".
Daniel on January 17, 2008 2:13 PMMy default font for coding is Verdana (8pt, very good looking on the visual studio). And I really don't care about other areas...
savas on January 17, 2008 2:15 PMBan Comic Sans?!?! Are you out of your mind?! Where is the love?
How many boring PowerPoint presentations have been livened up through the use of rainbow-colored, 72 pt., Comic Sans headlines? How many people have had their day brightened just a little by the big corporate memo, with the subject set in Comic Sans?
Ban Comic Sans?! Hell, no, you barbarians!
Brian on January 17, 2008 2:19 PMI can't remember exactly what it was, but Microsoft went with Arial over Helvetica due to either a license blocking them from using it or Helvetica was used somewhere else (and they wanted a different font but similar), it wasn't relating to the costs. But hey, I heard that story about 10-12 years ago, I could be a little fuzzy on the details.
Ben on January 17, 2008 2:39 PM> That cracktro was mostly likely created with Fontrix
Thank you! That is what I was racking my brain trying to remember! Here's a scan of the manual for "Volume 15" that I converted to PNG, cleaned up, and hosted locally:
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/images/fontrix-fontpak-vol-15-p1.png
Here's the source. Lots and lots more available:
http://boutillon.free.fr/Underground/Anim_Et_Graph/Fontrix/Scans/
> Ban Comic Sans?! Hell, no, you barbarians!
I'm pretty sure you're kidding, but some people apparently write code using Comic Sans as their code font (I am not kidding, either), and it's still widely abused.
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000328.html
Jeff Atwood on January 17, 2008 4:05 PM> You may not like the new fonts, but Microsoft appears to be spending a pile of money designing new ones. And others seem to agree that the new fonts are pretty good:
The new "C" fonts from Microsoft in Vista and Office 2007 are of *extremely* high quality.
http://neosmart.net/blog/2006/a-comprehensive-look-at-the-new-microsoft-fonts/
However-- and this is the big, screaming, all-caps variety of HOWEVER -- these fonts *require* ClearType to look good. They are designed around RGB anti-aliasing and look like emulsified crap when ClearType is not enabled.
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000356.html
Jeff Atwood on January 17, 2008 4:09 PMFor those who may not believe it, there are published reports that indicate that the choice of font affects comprehension and readability. A good set of references can be found here:
http://www.unc.edu/~jkullama/inls181/final/bibliography.html
Also, a great book and I haven't seen mentioned here yet is Robin Williams' (NOT THE Robin Williams, but a female design expert) The Non-Designer's Design and Type Books. She does a wonderful job of explaining what typography is and why one should care, in a way understandable to non-designers.
Shawn on January 17, 2008 6:10 PM> But the discussion leads directly to another hugely important twenty-first century problem: how do you copyright the completely abstract, pure intellectual property that is a font?
The way out is clear: don't fall to the fallacy that "completely abstract, pure intellectual" things should be treated as property.
Hi Jeff,
A very good post and I loved it.. coz to some extent I, myself am a fusion of logic and art.
At an early age, I learnt coreldraw which gives you the freedom of creating your own font. I created one long back but it was crude.
Hope to do some in future.
We already have millions of pixels! (1280x1024 > 10^6)
I get the point though... just being pedantic.
Jheriko on January 18, 2008 4:44 AMI'm in the middle of reading "The Hacker Crackdown" (http://www.mit.edu:8001/hacker/hacker.html - if you google there's a good audio book of it too both legally for free) and after going though the rise of ATT and telephone networks the book is now talking about BBS's and how they started "cyberspace" communities, this whole website with our comments and these articles and stories, it's a nice evolution from a small BBS. I called the three numbers in the image and all of them are disconnected. I'm not surprised there is no computer listening at the end of them but I find it funny they've been taken (I'm guessing) permanently out of service.
Frank on January 18, 2008 6:38 AM> some people apparently write code using Comic Sans as their code font
If you use Notepad++, the default font used for comments (in code) IS Comic Sans.
I'll have to give Microsoft credit starting with the web fonts for actually providing reasonable alternatives to Arial that can actually be used for body text. I remember that most of the fonts that shipped with Microsoft Office were display fonts.
Microsoft also used to claim that their TrueType fonts looked better on screen than Adobe Type 1 fonts. Although the extensive hinting made the fonts looked different at screen size and when anti-aliasing was not used. Arial even looked decent at 10 and 12 points.
John on January 18, 2008 7:24 AM@Shawn: I would also add Ms. Williams' "The Mac Is Not A Typewriter". It has a bunch of nice, juicy tidbits for using type on a Mac, but I believe it's equally applicable to Windows, Linux and others. She also coauthored "The PC Is Not A Typewriter", but it's been long out-of-print.
Buck on January 18, 2008 10:44 AM> I haven't seen mentioned here yet is Robin Williams' (NOT THE Robin Williams, but a female design expert) The Non-Designer's Design and Type Books
Great books. Indeed I have mentioned them before, thank you for reminding me.
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000853.html
> We already have millions of pixels!
I was thinking of per-sentence and per-word, more than absolute screen size-- the ratio of pixels to the letters on the screen.
Jeff Atwood on January 18, 2008 2:28 PMAnother book worthy of your attention is "TEX and METAFONT: New directions in typesetting" by Donald Knuth himself. It was published in 1979 and has been out of print for years, so may not be the easiest book to get your hands on these days.
Martin Cooper on January 18, 2008 3:59 PMWow. Seventy-seven comments in two days; fonts are like colors -- everyone knows what they like but not everyone can incorporate them well in design. I enjoyed the Bringhurst book, but at times I found myself amazed at the passion exhibited towards type. That stated, I personally have a physical negative reaction when viewing Comic Sans, and I remove it from any computer system I use regularly.
One aside that I found amusing is that the MoMA website prefers Arial over Helvetica in its stylesheet.
http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/exhibitions.php?id=4506
Is quite consistent in declaring font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; in its CSS stylesheet. Perhaps they don't expect Windows users to even have Helvetica installed.
Thanks for the great post. This one struck a chord in me. I too started out in the Apple ][ days and remember good old 300 baud. Even after leaving behind software development (mostly) a couple of career changes ago, my love for type has been sustained. After graduating from law school in 1997, I helped found a new law journal. One of my principal missions was to make it readable, unlike most of the other stuff available in that space. I think we probably spent more on fonts than any other law journal in history (Adobe Jenson was my favorite).
Unfortunately, the corporate "standards" - both at my former law firm and my new management consulting home - require use of Arial and Times New Roman. Yuck.
I trust that Times and Arial will be first against the wall when the revolution comes.
Montgomery on January 21, 2008 9:14 PM| Content (c) 2009 Jeff Atwood. Logo image used with permission of the author. (c) 1993 Steven C. McConnell. All Rights Reserved. |
Subscribe in a reader
Subscribe via email