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by mturmon 3287 days ago
I found this justification particularly ridiculous: "Imagine shop windows that react according to the movements of passers-by."

Who would think this is compelling enough to put within the elevator pitch for the concept?

1 comments

I think a better justification along the same lines would be: "Imagine shop windows that react according to the weather to always make themselves as easy to see through as possible, regardless of whether it's overcast or a sunny day."

Get your window in the desired dimensions, and let some automated protocol make sure it's as easy to see through as possible for all your potential customers.

Write your content, and let the setting in the OS or application automatically make sure it's as legible as possible regardless the size of screen, pixel density, and expected viewing distance.

That is really supposed to be a major selling point of a new font standard?

The point I was trying to get across is that the creators seem to have become intoxicated on their own fumes. That use is a crazy small niche, and if you really wanted to blow money on eye catching displays, there are any number of more creative and engaging ways to do so.

(I used to know a person who had the privilege of doing the windows for Barney's in LA, and another designer who did amazing creative interactive displays for the flagship Levi's store in Soho, London.)

> That use is a crazy small niche, and if you really wanted to blow money on eye catching displays, there are any number of more creative ways to do so.

I'm not sure if that's supposed to be a followup to the simile, but it sounds just as likely that you've missed the point I was trying to relay, so I'll elaborate.

The point is not to wow your customers, it's to make things clear. Different tactics work for that in different circumstances. A high density phone display, an older desktop display, and a 4K desktop display may all benefit from slightly different settings such as thickness in a font. Allowing the OS to optimize for functional legibility based on device and usage specifications is a good capability, in my opinion. That the demo allows you to see how the system works easily through dynamic changes does not mean that's the intended use.

As other have pointed out, just the ability to ship one font for your website and allow it to generate the correct variation based on responsive web design parameters is itself a win in the bandwidth it saves.