This, like almost all writing about fonts, is bewildering to me. It just doesn't matter. For me, there are just 3 fonts in the world: serif, sans serif, and weird fonts (Papyrus, the 70s groovy font, the Tron font, etc.)
I read HN articles about some company being shaken down for using an unlicensed font on their website, draconic font licensing agreements, paying per page impression for fonts. And I do not understand why anyone would even bother specifying a non-standard font that requires a license and payment for their website. None of your customers are going to care one bit either way. Except perhaps for the 0.000001% of the population that care about fonts. But even those, are they going to say "I'm not going to order my RAM from you, because you have a bad font on your site?" That seems unlikely. If using some non-free font costs even $1, or takes even 1 minute of your time, it's already a losing proposition.
What's even more strange is reading strong opinions on how great Helvetica is, or how terrible Arial is ("Microsoft bad", I know.) They're the same thing! I guess I'm too dumb to notice the subtle notes of citrus and leather in the kerning, the sublime genius of the hinting.
It just doesn’t matter… to you. Which is fine. Not everything matters to everyone equally. Typefaces are fundamentally art and they get the same level of appreciation that artwork receives, everything from none to abject worship. Don’t assume that your brain is at all like mine or anyone else’s.
I'd wish a lot of people who make statements like "it just doesn't matter," or "this is meaningless" or "this is stupid," or any statement that terminates without some kind of qualify or scope, perhaps take a moment and also add "to me" to it and consider if there might be people for whom that statement is not true.
In fairness to the person at the top of this thread, they did add qualifiers like that.
I can't be bothered addressing the rest because it's like trying to explain emotions to a robot, but if you have a poorly hinted font, you will notice, because it'll be annoyingly blurry unless you have a high DPI display.
There are people out there bewildered by those of us who have strong operating system preferences. For most users, Windows, MacOS, Linux/Android, and iOS are pretty much the same thing. They let you connect to WiFi, install apps, send email, etc…. They show you icons you can click or double-click to launch an app.
I do think designers can go over the top. I could tell you stories. On the other hand, there is some line between design doesn't matter and "can't you see the difference between the two shades of black in this poster?" (Which is one of those stories.)
I should say as well that I've spent a fair bit of time in Asia and, to my Western eyes, a lot of conference materials look amateurish and make my eyes bleed. Maybe it doesn't matter much at the end of the day but I think it does at some level.
According to Don Norman, attractive things work better. I assume that would include printed matter and signage.
I don't disagree. There are a lot of subtle things that people notice and react to even if not consciously--and even if tech folks don't want to admit to.
You will enjoy riding the subway in NYC then. Your anxiety levels will remain blissfully low as you pass sign after sign randomly alternating between traditional and Neue and Helvetica, evidenced by perfectly and non-perfectly horizontal caps, for example on lowercase ‘e’ and ‘a’.
I'm too dumb as well. I flipped this to make it about text editors. Personally, I love my Emacs:
This, like almost all writing about fonts, is bewildering to me. It just doesn't matter. For me, there are just 3 text editors in the world: IDE's, terminal editors, and weird editors (Ed, Teco, etc.)
What's even more strange is reading strong opinions on how great Emacs is, or how terrible NeoVim is ("Gnu good Apache bad", I know.) They're the same thing! I guess I'm too dumb to notice the subtle differences between Lisp and Lua.
> about text editors
I get where you're coming from, but the analogy sort of breaks down here - those of us who work with text editors all the time love our tool of choice because it has features that make our lives easier. I can't see how a font could have or lack a "feature".
> I can't see how a font could have or lack a "feature"
Oh boy. Everything about a typeface is a feature, and many of them are functional and not just stylistic choices.
- Monospace glyphs are a feature almost everyone here is familiar with and appreciates.
- Serifs are a feature for readability
- Open apertures like in humanist fonts are more readable
- Closed apertures in grotesque fonts make the text more dense
- Stroke contrast
- X-height
- Variety of weights
- Ligatures
- Dotted or slashed zero to distinguish it from capital O
- Features to distinguish capital I and lowercase l glyphs
...these are all features of a typeface.
Not to mention all the far-out OpenType features.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_typographic_features
It's not required for you to appreciate aesthetics. But I wager the reason you don't appreciate it is because you haven't experienced it. If you have only slept on a prison mat, you wouldn't understand people talking about a $4000 premium bed. If you only used Buzz Light-year target bedsheets, you wouldn't understand people comparing high thread count featherbeds. That's okay, you are still clinically healthy if you don't appreciate other dimensions some products offer.
Kerning does affect readability sometimes. Some fonts cause more issues with dyslexia than others.
I wouldn't say it is so much that the population doesn't care about fonts, more a case of them interacting with them in ways they don't notice consciously. The fonts on packaging affect the public perception of a product (and whether they buy them). Other fonts can hint at something being more modern or more traditional.
If you think that all fonts are equally legible, then I can confidently say that you need glasses.
The most legible font is Atkinson Hyperlegible, which is free and developed by the Braille institute.
https://www.brailleinstitute.org/freefont/
I never see people using it because it's a weird hybrid between serif and sans serif, breaking many traditional design rules.
That’s the most legible font for people with impaired vision, which is a completely different concept
I'm replying to the comment saying "you need glasses" to say that the best font for people that need glasses is free.
They really aren't! I was looking at some small print earlier in low light conditions and the font does make all the difference there.
Falsehoods programmers believe about fonts