Comments for Vostok Theme - White

Comment on Eames furniture, lime green carpets and post-its by Mark

Mark — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 15:28:35 +0000

Testing in between comment

Comment on Eames furniture, lime green carpets and post-its by duopixel

duopixel — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 13:19:59 +0000

Testing highlighted comment

Comment on Eames furniture, lime green carpets and post-its by Luis Villas

Luis Villas — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 19:04:01 +0000

I couldn’t agree more. Lots of companies don’t build workplaces, they build and picture empty stages waiting for actors to come.

Comment on Fonts: true meaning by bathroom tiles

bathroom tiles — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 05:37:16 +0000

Every wonder what the fonts you choose *really* mean?

Comment on Fonts: true meaning by Tergenev

Tergenev — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 16:20:40 +0000

All this really tells me is that graphic designers are too snarky and self-important for their own good. And I say this as someone who, unfortunately, must spend a great deal of my time doing graphic design.

Comment on Fonts: true meaning by trigger finger

trigger finger — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 15:24:35 +0000

meh

Comment on Fonts: true meaning by César Astudillo

César Astudillo — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 09:53:39 +0000

Carlos, you and me are in agreement except in a matter of quantity. I do think there *are* intrinsic properties to good design, and then there *are* socially constructed properties that are the result of the influence of culture on design (culture in a broad sense). What I believe is that cultural context plays a huge and broadly dismissed influence on what many consider “intrinsic”. I bet if you wrote down a list of twenty distinguishing features of what you consider a “well-designed font”, and then you went through the list, chances are you would have to ultimately admit seventeen or eighteen of the elements in the list are socially/culturally/historically situated, and only two or three would be based on a few relatively invariant laws of perception that have been well-known for decades. A lot of the features of good design are the features we have been *incultured* (you might as well say “*trained*”) to consider as good design. If you made a readability lab test today with a 11th century monk, I bet you a dinner in an expensive restaurant that he would read and understand texts set in, say, Clairbaux much faster and with less fatigue than texts set in, say, Bookman. I bet most designers today would be surprised to see the extent to which assertions about the right kerning, the right x-height, the right stroke width difference and so on, are dependent on cultural context. And the things you might dismiss as “trends” or “fashion” or “acquired tastes” are no other than short-term fluctuations of cultural context, whereas many of the things you would categorise as “intemporal, intrinsic, dependable good design principles” depend on no other than longer-term fluctuations of the same cultural context. Most of the principles you cling to as intemporal, would look as childish fads to any designer with a one-thousand-year career under his belt. The difference between a “trend” and a “design principle” is just a difference of scale.

Comment on Fonts: true meaning by Carlos Úbeda

Carlos Úbeda — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:11:00 +0000

@César, I understand you but I don’t agree with some points…

First of all, I think there are some fonts that are well designed and other ones that not. It is not (only) a matter of taste. For example, Comic Sans is poorly designed (kerning, serifs…). Ok, that could be enough for its initial purpose as the “Bob” interface font, but not for a good type.

Second, context. Helvetica is properly designed. But a press book in Helvetica is (99%) a total fail. And a proper context could help to even the worst font. Have you seen Caldo Aneto’s packaging?

For last, as you said, the acquired. A good type in the most proper context could be boring, annoying or even disgusting. Overuse, bad use, etc.
Nowadays, I understand that a smart designer could prefer to use Comic Sans for a logo than to use Obama’s Gotham again. But it would be a very funny postmodernist attitude (“you know that I know that you know…”), specially if you add tons of hypocrisy (“Comic Sans is the people’s font, up with the people”)

Ok, trends are important, but fonts are not just like fashion.

(Sorry for the speech!)

Comment on Fonts: true meaning by César Astudillo

César Astudillo — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 20:22:35 +0000

One thing I love about fonts is they are a bit like names for babies: there is this inextricable relationship between their intrinsic attributes and the attributes they acquire with use. The best of the best fonts will start looking moronic the minute too many morons start using them. With the possible exception, as far as I’m concerned, of Helvetica, a typeface I fail to hate even though It should be considered as terribly vulgar by now, judging by its usage. There are two possible explanations for this: the first is that there really is such a thing as intrinsic elegance, Helvetica has it, and this intrinsically elegance makes it immune to overusage; and the second is that in the last fifteen years Arial has operated as Helvetica’s decoy for vulgarity, which would lead us to the conclusion that Arial is the best thing that could have happenned to its Swiss ancestor. Typefaces, like many human creations, have this fascinating dialogue between the intrinsic and the acquired.

Comment on Fonts: true meaning by Carlos Úbeda

Carlos Úbeda — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 20:01:36 +0000

@Javier hmm.. overused by trendy graphic designers AND Norman Foster