[crispyambulance]

IBM is a large company (380K headcount) with a design staff. They produce A LOT of textual material for clients that are paying serious piles of money.

Typography is a fickle, subtle thing that can influence people without them being aware of it. While on HN, folks may pretend to prefer stark naked HTML, that doesn't fly with the general public.

IBM decided it needed a refresh in that area. Good for them and good for the graphic design professionals that did the rather impressive work here.

[justinjlynn]

stark naked html doesn't necessarily imply ugly default styles. think of it as attempting to achieve perfection in fashion through doing as much as possible with as little as possible.