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0 pointszasdffaa3y ago0 comments

Can you give a visual example where they're not? (other than anti-aliasing round the edges)

0 comments

See https://medium.com/alex-couch-s-portfolio/type-hierarchy-and... for some of them. The “blurry eye test” mentioned there is related to the typographical term of color (see https://bigelowandholmes.typepad.com/bigelow-holmes/2015/04/... and https://practicaltypography.com/color.html) which is affected, among other things, by the actual shape of the glyphs. Font contrast has little to do, if anything at all, with anti-aliasing.

zasdffaaOP3y ago

I see. You're clearly knowledgeable in this area and my naively used terminology has misled you. In terms of contrast I'm talking about the simple stuff "Contrast is the difference in luminance..." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contrast_(vision) whereas you're talking of something typographical I was unaware of. Sorry for the confusion.

flobosg3y ago

In the end, font contrast also involves the simple stuff, but the difference in perceived luminance depends on more than just foreground and background colors.

SamBam3y ago

To be fair, though, the first comment that referred to contrast was clearly talking only about color, and had nothing to do with "topography contrast."

The original comment was

> Designers love grey on grey. I’ll take comic sans any day.

These are two orthogonal features. It's like saying "fashion today is really into high waists, but I'll take denim any day."

8note3y ago

They're orthogonal in the space of pixels on the page, and maybe not even, if the font includes some gradients or dithering, but they fit into different wholes, with some dependence.

Denim has a design style to it that goes beyond the material, as does comic sans. Like, you could put "comic sans" as part of a dalle prompt, and it would do more than pick a font

geraldwhen3y ago

They’re not. The people asking for specific font faces for brand or accessibility reasons are the same people who design apps and websites with text I can’t read.

In this case, click the post link. It’s black text on a white background. Comic sans would work fine, and it would be better than a monospaced font added for some nostalgia for a time when fonts could not be kerned.

flobosg3y ago

> the first comment (…) was clearly talking only about color

That comment explicitly mentions a typeface (Comic Sans).

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

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flobosg3y ago

zasdffaaOP3y ago

flobosg3y ago

In the end, font contrast also involves the simple stuff, but the difference in perceived luminance depends on more than just foreground and background colors.

SamBam3y ago

To be fair, though, the first comment that referred to contrast was clearly talking only about color, and had nothing to do with "topography contrast."

The original comment was

> Designers love grey on grey. I’ll take comic sans any day.

These are two orthogonal features. It's like saying "fashion today is really into high waists, but I'll take denim any day."

8note3y ago

They're orthogonal in the space of pixels on the page, and maybe not even, if the font includes some gradients or dithering, but they fit into different wholes, with some dependence.

Denim has a design style to it that goes beyond the material, as does comic sans. Like, you could put "comic sans" as part of a dalle prompt, and it would do more than pick a font

geraldwhen3y ago

They’re not. The people asking for specific font faces for brand or accessibility reasons are the same people who design apps and websites with text I can’t read.

flobosg3y ago

> the first comment (…) was clearly talking only about color

That comment explicitly mentions a typeface (Comic Sans).

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse