[shaan7]

Actually the content of the article makes this comment slightly unwarranted (unless I'm misreading the tone). The author has described, quite well, on how typography isn't about just subjective artistic choice but largely its functional implications. Oh and there is a reason why a lot of engineering folks have critical opinions about this. Some of us have worked with designers in the past that simply do not take the effort to explain why a certain design choice was made (even though they put a painful amount of thought into the process). At my office, it took our engineering and design team a lot of time to finally figure out what was missing. Now our discussions have designers going into details of choices which makes it so clear that most of them aren't subjective at all (some are, and that is fine).

[crispyambulance]

I think designers have the very challenging job of "threading the needle" between business considerations and aesthetics. Both can be critical depending on the mission.

Unfortunately, "subjective" is often used as a dirty word especially around here where some folks even claim to prefer html stripped of all styling. As you pointed out, there is a lot of thought and sweat that goes into the creation of a typeface. The artistic aspects deserve respect and attention not just from the practitioners but also from their users.

I think it's actually a good thing that there's a proliferation of typefaces. If a large company, wanting to avoid millions of dollars in fees to license a typeface, can pay a designer to create a new one that's a good thing. Even if the typeface is created for reasons of brand vanity, it puts someone to work and helps to further the development of typography in general.

[falcolas]

> The artistic aspects deserve respect and attention not just from the practitioners but also from their users.

As a developer and sysadmin: Let me know how that works for you. End users will rarely if ever recognize your contributions; will only really notice your contribution when it doesn't work.

Sorry.

[crispyambulance]

    > Sorry.

Thanks, but no need for the phony apology.

Typefaces, like other graphic elements, might not be felt to the point of the reader explicitly "recognizing" these contributions. Their impact is real albeit subtle. Designers are aware of that but still work really hard anyway.

[lobotryas]

How can you demonstrate or prove that the impact is “real”?

[simonh]

There’s a huge amount of research into this sort of thing funded by advertisers and marketers.

[reaperducer]

Add a CSS override to someone's browser that forces web sites to display in Comic Sans.

[bunderbunder]

Assuming (with a tip of the hat to misterbwong) that you want to demonstrate the impact is real by measuring it, A/B testing would be one of the more popular ways to do it nowadays. The kinds of questions you can ask with it are somewhat limited, so you've got to be worried about the trap of searching where the light is better. But it is so very cheap and easy.

If you have more resources and need to ask questions A/B testing doesn't handle well, you can also do it with good old-fashioned surveying. Take (say) a few hundred people sampled as representatively as possible from your target market. Randomly show half of them a version of the design that uses one typeface, and the other half a version that uses another. Ask them to rate how well they liked the design. See if there's a difference. Or ask them to recall things they saw, and see if there's a difference.

[misterbwong]

I think you're confusing real with measurable.

[Green_man]

Alternatively, how are we supposed to know it's real if it's not measurable?

[H1Supreme]

I worked in graphic design before I made my way into programming full time. My first job was building desktop apps with a team of programmers with very little design sensibilities. As such, there was lots of plain grey, haphazard interfaces. While they functioned fine, they left nearly everything to be desired aesthetically.

I received immediate, positive feedback on my initial contributions. Applying basic design to otherwise "undesigned" interfaces, made a big difference to our users.

While that may be an extreme example, it does highlight the need for design. Whether or not someone can "respect" it, as the OP suggests, is debatable. But, the effectiveness of something designed well, isn't.

[Consultant32452]

When I think of design I think of two very different definitions. The first is as you describe, putting some basic aesthetics and usability on an otherwise "undesigned" page/app/etc. The other definition is how I worked on a team that spent over a week rebuilding buttons because the designer didn't like the way native buttons worked in browsers.

When someone complains about how superfluous "design" is, I always assume they mean the latter definition. But I could be wrong.

[walljm]

agreed. the opportunity for huge gains are only available when the starting point is really bad, so then the change is huge and thus obviously recognizable. when you're already operating at near the top of the game, differences are very small. but those small differences are what make the difference between really good and insanely great. and its worth striving for that.

[lobotryas]

The biggest problem is that after this initial, high value work is done the designers are still on the payroll and they still need to demonstrate their value/be doing something. That’s how you get un-necessary UI redesigns and, arguably, custom typefaces.

IMHO, designers just don’t know when to stop.

[dceddia]

I think the same could be said of developers. Or, maybe in both cases, it's the companies that don't know when to stop.

As a developer, and maybe more relevant here, a user of software, it's kind of surprising how development efforts often continue well past the point of shipping something useful. Now, I'm not arguing that this applies to every software product, or that people should stop at the bare minimum like "welp, we shipped v1, let's pack it up everyone."

But this underlying belief that things must be continually improved is very pervasive in software and even moreso in open source. ("Last commit was 6 months ago? This project is obviously dead!")

I don't know that anything can or should be done to "fix" this, but it's an interesting observation. Think about it next time there's an "upgrade" that breaks something or changes a workflow you liked. Why did that happen?

[lobotryas]

The difference is that developers can go on to build new features or even new products for the same company. Can they end up making things worse? Yes, but in such case I personally would blame short-sighted Product Managers chasing the new shiny.

Conversely, designers can not in isolation build a new product and thus are stuck (again, in my opinion) reinventing the wheel for what exists.

And yes, I agree with you that there is a lot of change for its own sake and I wish it would stop regardless of the source. See the recent UI overhaul of gmail. It was enough to force me to use their basic HTML UI and now I’m looking for an alternative all together.

[dcow]

I don’t think your comment is fair mostly because the sysadmin-developer rarely gets to inject aesthetics into their work. When they do, it’s not targeted at end users it’s targeted at other developers.

However let me offer a counter anecdote: I love the BSD man pages. Do I think BSD is objectively better than other systems? That’s debatable. But I sure do appreciate the meticulous care with which the BSD manual is maintained. I don’t remember names off the top of my head but I always read the authors section of a BSD man page.

If you’re really seeking end user appreciation I’d suggest you try your hand in a relatively more creative context, like writing a user interface. The amount that people care matters enough that a program with fewer features, or that is less stable, or inferior on an “objective” technical level, but with a snazzier, more refined, UI will often be preferred to a technically superior one by users.

[unethical_ban]

As a sysadmin and scripter/micro-framework-user: Assuming a UI's design doesn't get in the way of its function, an attractive UI is much more enjoyable to work with than an ugly one.

[msla]

> Unfortunately, "subjective" is often used as a dirty word especially around here where some folks even claim to prefer html stripped of all styling.

Because so many other things designers come up with are less readable and less usable in general, even as they protest that their designs have manifold improvements over the previous status quo and that we're just too philistine to see them.

I appreciate good styling, I merely disagree that gray text on a gray background with 80% of the screen eaten up by margins qualifies as such.

[PMan74]

> Actually the content of the article makes this comment slightly unwarranted

I don't think his/her frustration was with the article, rather with some of the HN comments on the article.

[username3]

What was missing?