I think there's some confusion in who is responding to whom, then. I never said anything about piracy, but the person responding to me may have confused me with the top-level comment.
All I have done is defend the importance of typography, and never mentioned piracy or stealing.
Typography is important. So important that we have really good looking fonts available for free. And a custom font isn’t going to be the deciding factor in whether your next AI powered social graph app sinks or floats. Guaranteed.
Because designers fuss a lot about nearly undetectable differences in color, fonts, and many other things. Maybe they make a difference in the aggregate. But if you can’t identify the difference between Ariak and Helvetica (to pick a particularly glaring example) you’re probably not one of those designers.
I agree. Many people can hardly tell the difference between Arial and Helvetica. There used to be a website where you could test how good you are at telling them apart.
You won't notice many small differences between certain fonts. But that doesn't mean they're unnecessary. As you said, they make a difference when taken together. For screens, there are a number of adjustments and techniques that improve screen readability. Hinting, separate designs, contrast for low dpi and subpixel rendering compatibility, for example. At least some of the optimizations don't work out of the box, but have to be adjusted by designers.
That's why it can happen that a font you bought for print media now requires an extra license for websites and apps.
There are plenty of wonderfully readable fonts for the web and apps that are free and sufficient for most projects. If you want something special, I don't think it's wrong to pay for it. Personally, I would prefer more reasonable prices, though.
And there are also design fashions. I tend to dislike a lot of the current designs by seemingly 20 something’s with perfect vision that use rake-thin fonts in some grey tone.
Same, 18/20 for me. The all caps on MATTEL got me, and the STAPLES one as well, for some reason.
But the differences on the lowercase "t" and "s", uppercase "g", the number 3, and both upper an lowercase "c", are obvious. Helvetica is much more refined.
There are good reasons why well designed typography is expensive. A lot of thought and effort went into designing every line and curve. Even if most people can't consciously appreciate these details, they experience it subconsciously by how the design makes them feel. This is why brand designers are well paid. Anyone can design a logo, but to make a design that transmits a specific feeling, that requires a lot of skill. And typography is a core component of this.
Yeah MATTEL was the one instance where the difference wasn’t clear. I still had a gut feeling but couldn’t really justify it logically like I could for the others.
Maybe "this font is offensively priced to the point where I immediately think the person selling it is a criminal using this for money laundering, or clinically insane" and "it's hard to sell enough fonts to live off of" are related?
Maybe if charlatans didn't say with a straight face that a font should be sold on a subscription model they'd sell more? Maybe if it didn't cost as much as a car they'd sell more?
apparently not so important that "a custom font isn’t going to be the deciding factor in whether your next AI powered social graph app sinks or floats."
You describe a state in germany.
Having driven in the us and in Europe for thousands of kilometres, the amount of roundabouts in US cities is negligible.
I want the internet to be free/open to all as much as anyone. But specific websites aren’t the internet work itself. You aren’t entitled to them. many websites, most startup websites, are maintained by individuals or small businesses which aren’t inherently profitable. They can’t afford to deal with spambots, ad click through fraud, etc. It’s reasonable for them to deny-by-default and only spend time (money) dealing with user-agents that can pass this proof-of-personhood test (until there are better zip proof of personhoods, a huge opportunity atm)
Anyone else notice how First Republic bank was bought a few years ago by Colony Capital co-managed by Thomas Barrack, who was a Senior Advisor to the Trump Campaign before being found guilty of acting as an unregistered foreign agent for UAE? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Barrack
from wikipedia “Barrack recommended that Trump hire Paul Manafort as his campaign manager. Barrack first met Manafort in the 1970s when they were both working for Saudis and living in Beirut. In 2007, Barrack had loaned Manafort $1.5 million to refinance a home in the Hamptons.”
some folks wish they were too big to fail but aren’t. they’re just small big failures
Yeah. That indicates "mental illness" is not about the mental well-being of the person, but how much negative societal impact that person has with the people around them.
The old line about crazy people not worrying if they're crazy is not entirely accurate but a lack of self-reflection on your mental state is a pretty big givaway.
The question is whether drinking contaminated water has a survival advantage. It could have one if clean water is so scarce to the point that you're more likely to die of thirst before reproductive age than of bacterial infection.
