[spokey]

Precisely. This is the typographic equivalent of advising "don't use colors that clash" without specifying what "clashing" means.

I actually think you could teach objective if subtle rules about this (for instance, compare the lowercase 'n' for the fonts in the first example) but this article doesn't do that. Instead the article uses terms like "neutral", "outspoken", "conservative". "dynamic", etc. to describe what to a casual observer are quite similar fonts (it's not like we're comparing Helvetica to Karbine or Comic Sans).

[dbonneville]

Oftentimes, in art and design, you can't specify, in a binary way, why something clashes. To your eye, if it clashes, it clashes. You can't really break down an impression into a series of isolated minutia while retaining a sense of the overall.

It's also much easier to define "clash" by simply showing "harmony", which is the simpler, more intuitive approach to take in a simplified blog format.

Sometimes you don't need to know why something is good or bad, you just need to trust your eyes. And if you train your eyes on enough good stuff, the bad becomes blindingly obvious.

[spokey]

I agree. It's clearly not something that can be entirely reduced to formulas and numerical relationships.

Moreover, an intuitive "design sense" is probably faster and will carry you farther than any set of specific guidelines.

But this doesn't have to be something you just intuit or pick up through osmosis.

For instance, a blind person could create an acceptably harmonic color scheme with a little knowledge of color theory. It ain't all handy-waving and intuition, there's some baseline part of this that can be reduced to numbers and guidelines.

You can jump-start someone's path to an intuitive design sense by teaching them some of the theory behind it (whether or not designers are conscious of some of the guidelines they're often following). It'll only take you so far, but it will take you a long way from square one.

EDIT:

Hi Douglas, I see from another comment that you are the author of the article. Neat, that's always one of the great things about HN.

By the way, since your account is new, let me offer this disclaimer: don't let the harshness of HN users get you down. Engineers are jerks by nature, and HN readers in particular are keen on offering what they see as constructive criticism.

To that end, I think the root comment on this thread has it right, what strikes me as odd about this article is that seems to be simultaneously aimed at neophytes and experts.

For example, under "Avoid Similar Classifications" you write about "slab serif" and "transitional serif" fonts without defining those terms.

If someone knows what these terms mean, are they likely to need this advice, or anything more than a simple reminder of it?

That's something of an honest question. I have no idea what "slab serif" and "transitional serif" mean beyond what I can grok from your usage of the term in the article.

IMO, this article would be much more useful to me, for example, if it said something along the lines of:

"Here's a slab serif font. Notice how the serifs have the same weight as the body.

"Here's a transitional serif font. Notice how the serifs are thinner than the body.

"Notice how if you use two slightly different fonts from the same category they create tension? It's better to use fonts from different categories, like this..."

but maybe I'm not in the target audience for this article.

[dbonneville]

"...neophytes and experts"

I think if you read the comments, your assessment is incorrect. There is a near unanimous thanks for some simple, clear examples. If you are reading about combining typefaces, you obviously know the basics already. If you don't know what a slab serif is, you wouldn't be worrying about combining them with something else. In fact, you'd probably be doing something else entirely :).