[xrayspec]

Respectfully dude, I clicked through to your sites because I was curious to see how you apply your own design advice. It seems that mostly, you don't. Your blog [1] even employs the monochrome, typo-centric style that Butterick seems to like.

[1] https://geoff.greer.fm

[ggreer]

What part of my own advice don't I follow? I don't use web fonts. I use a popular serif font (Baskerville[1], falling back to other serif fonts if the user lacks that). I use the default font weight so text isn't too thin. I use high contrast (#000 on #fff) for readability with dim screens or old eyes. Links are underlined to make them obvious in body text. My CSS is 4.7KB, though only 1.8KB is transferred because I use gzip content encoding.

Honestly, I don't think my site looks as good as Butterick's, but I'm not a designer and I didn't spend much time on it. Also, my implementation is 1,000x more efficient.

1. I picked Baskerville because it's slightly more convincing than other fonts: https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/08/hear-all-ye...

[omnimus]

Just nitpicking - Baskerville 95% people won't have. Even less people will have 'Hoefler Text'. So you end up with most people seeing Georgia - you should focus on that experience. For some reason with Georgia there is gigantic word spacing. Like you would need like word-spacing: -0.6em to get somehow cool. Not sure why it happens on site or if its Georgia.

I see you have gripe with designers but you have to understand few things

1. There is as many bad designers as there is bad programmers. Lot of the companies hire quite unexperienced designers because it sort of works out. Don't forget designers get lot less money then programmers so it might also mean that the quality people are programmers by now.

2. Designing graphics is mostly about putting yourself into someone elses shoes. Nobody else in company has to like the design, important is that your clients do and for that you can gather data. Often you would be suprised what people actually like.

3. I have read this https://geoff.greer.fm/2018/04/02/conserve-vectical-pixels/ and it seems like you want to have very functional approach to design. But you have to realize that function in visual communication is not straightforward. Its not about cramming most of data on page. Empty space is extremely functional element. It might not be so important for you but for most people it is. It establishes hiearchy and helps to rest your eyes. 95% time you are not designing Bloomberg Terminal but some interface people will see for the first time or maybe just from time to time. Things might seem to you super obvious because you spent so many hours with them but thats just not what most of the people get. And i am not even talking about their experiences with the computer itself.

[xrayspec]

> I don't use web fonts.

Well, actually ... yes you do (Proxima Nova). Some of it is even thin!

https://floobits.com/

[ggreer]

I thought we were talking about my personal site. Floobits looks the way it does because of a designer. It doesn't reflect my personal tastes very well.

That said, I'll probably fix those fonts soon. Thanks for pointing that out.

[choochootrain]

i think the low contrast in your Geoff.Greer.fm logo and the "go dark" button might be what GP is talking about. i didn't realize the button had words until i saw the hover state had opacity: 1

[lucideer]

Respectfully dude, it seems you haven't read the comment you replied to. The only criticism of geoff's site you seem to have is the aesthetic similarly to Butterick's, yet nowhere did he criticise Butterick's style, only its implementation.