[erikpukinskis]

This is because a vanishingly small percentage of designers have truly, in their heart, accepted the web as a medium.

They'll sit lovingly with a bunch of dinged up old lead typesetting tools, positively jizz over imperfections in ink distribution, but try to talk to them about system fonts, box models, or free phones and their eyes glaze over and they drift off into their color calibrated RAW dreamland.

In schools they teach people to embrace media but that only applies to fetishized antique media.

They'll use half of the GPU to render CRT glow too, with 8-bit graphics, gush about material metaphors in their visual design, but they won't consider the material properties of the actual distribution medium for their work.

We still haven't seen a true modernist design movement in the digital age. Maybe very briefly for a year or two in the nineties when browsers were good enough to be interesting but not good enough to do anyrhing. It'll come eventually, but it's taking its sweet time.

[TheOtherHobbes]

This is a completely unrealistic view of how designers work.

I've yet to meet a web designer who would have the first clue what to do with hot metal. There are some old guys who remember physical typesetting for print, but design has been primarily electronic for around twenty years now.

The history of the web started after most print had already moved to digital fonts and layout with Pagemaker, then Quark Xpress.

It's one of the tragedies of browser development that it took the web 15 years to start to catch up with industry standard page layout possibilities, and another 5 years to start dealing with fonts intelligently.

And the web - frankly - still sucks for this kind of work. It's not that responsive design is harder than print, it's more that from a designer's POV CSS has been a train wreck for most of its history.

I understand some people here want their own font stylings, and that's fine. But designers use fonts for a reason, and "Not invented here because I don't like this" isn't a good enough reason to make it impossible for them to do that.

[erikpukinskis]

That's exactly my point. You are unwilling to accept the properties of your medium. You just say "it sucks" and fight with it. You're like an acrylic painter who complains that oil dries slowly and keeps designing for acrylics, and everything comes out smudgy.

[mbrock]

Web fonts are a part of the web, so it kind of sounds like you're the one refusing to accept the properties of the medium.

[cbr]

Web fonts are a poorly performing part of the web.

[et-al]

> This is because a vanishingly small percentage of designers have truly, in their heart, accepted the web as a medium.

That seems a bit harsh. If anything, I feel like the old static print mindset is on its way out and designers have been leaning towards the web as a medium with dynamic layouts. Speakers[0] at An Event Apart spoke of the web as a fluid continuum, so even the idea of designing for only mobile and desktop is insufficient these days (especially with all the varying device sizes).

If you're working with any designer that still expects pixel perfection, I'd suggest that they attend An Event Apart conference, or at least read a few articles on A List Apart.

[0] http://alistapart.com/article/responsive-web-design

[yellowapple]

"I feel like the old static print mindset is on its way out and designers have been leaning towards the web as a medium with dynamic layouts."

I want to believe you, but I feel like the sheer number of designers who whine about GIMP's lack of CMYK support in their justifications for using Photoshop instead (nevermind that pretty much all modern display technology is RGB-centric) suggests otherwise.

I can understand thinking in a CMYK mindset and not wanting to have to think about RGB, but that nonetheless suggests an unwillingness to change one's mindset to adapt to current media.

[TeMPOraL]

Still doesn't solve the bigger problem - that neither designers nor publishers actually embraced the digital medium. They've been treating the web as if it was a poster - something for the designers to show off on. The only thing the current "responsive design" fad brought up is that the poster now changes its layout with size in a somewhat intelligent manner. But they're still drawing posters. We're still getting only text + pictures + occasional video. What about interactive descriptions? Embedded simulations? Models that we can explore, or play with? Nowhere to be found, except in occasional essay by Bret Victor.

[et-al]

That's because up until recently, the only tools users have to interact have been 2D. If 3D becomes a thing, more designers will embrace it and think of new ways to communicate ideas in that space.

Also, in a discussion about communicating efficiently over limited bandwidth, and the possibility removing web fonts, 3D spaces is in a completely opposite direction. We'd have to load vector files and texture maps so that the 3D space doesn't look like crap.

Also, there's a limit to how much input a human can process. There's a reason why certain sites have gotten more simple to restrict distractions.

[thrillgore]

>We still haven't seen a true modernist design movement in the digital age.

But we have -- unified design guidelines like Metro and Material Design ARE modernist design movements for the era of displays and interactive media. Just because it only applies for an Operating System or an Application doesn't make it any different than using cut-out colors or Gotham in your print ad.

[Gruselbauer]

Any recommendations as for investigating your last point? What would constitute a truly modernist design in your view? Good food for thought, thanks.