alt Hacker NewsThis, like almost all writing about fonts, is bewildering to me. It just doesn't matter. For me, there are just 3 fonts in the world: serif, sans serif, and weird fonts (Papyrus, the 70s groovy font, the Tron font, etc.)
I read HN articles about some company being shaken down for using an unlicensed font on their website, draconic font licensing agreements, paying per page impression for fonts. And I do not understand why anyone would even bother specifying a non-standard font that requires a license and payment for their website. None of your customers are going to care one bit either way. Except perhaps for the 0.000001% of the population that care about fonts. But even those, are they going to say "I'm not going to order my RAM from you, because you have a bad font on your site?" That seems unlikely. If using some non-free font costs even $1, or takes even 1 minute of your time, it's already a losing proposition.
What's even more strange is reading strong opinions on how great Helvetica is, or how terrible Arial is ("Microsoft bad", I know.) They're the same thing! I guess I'm too dumb to notice the subtle notes of citrus and leather in the kerning, the sublime genius of the hinting.
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I can't be bothered addressing the rest because it's like trying to explain emotions to a robot, but if you have a poorly hinted font, you will notice, because it'll be annoyingly blurry unless you have a high DPI display.
Kerning does affect readability sometimes. Some fonts cause more issues with dyslexia than others.
I wouldn't say it is so much that the population doesn't care about fonts, more a case of them interacting with them in ways they don't notice consciously. The fonts on packaging affect the public perception of a product (and whether they buy them). Other fonts can hint at something being more modern or more traditional.
There are people out there bewildered by those of us who have strong operating system preferences. For most users, Windows, MacOS, Linux/Android, and iOS are pretty much the same thing. They let you connect to WiFi, install apps, send email, etc…. They show you icons you can click or double-click to launch an app.
You will enjoy riding the subway in NYC then. Your anxiety levels will remain blissfully low as you pass sign after sign randomly alternating between traditional and Neue and Helvetica, evidenced by perfectly and non-perfectly horizontal caps, for example on lowercase ‘e’ and ‘a’.
I'm too dumb as well. I flipped this to make it about text editors. Personally, I love my Emacs:
This, like almost all writing about fonts, is bewildering to me. It just doesn't matter. For me, there are just 3 text editors in the world: IDE's, terminal editors, and weird editors (Ed, Teco, etc.)
What's even more strange is reading strong opinions on how great Emacs is, or how terrible NeoVim is ("Gnu good Apache bad", I know.) They're the same thing! I guess I'm too dumb to notice the subtle differences between Lisp and Lua.
If you think that all fonts are equally legible, then I can confidently say that you need glasses.
It's not required for you to appreciate aesthetics. But I wager the reason you don't appreciate it is because you haven't experienced it. If you have only slept on a prison mat, you wouldn't understand people talking about a $4000 premium bed. If you only used Buzz Light-year target bedsheets, you wouldn't understand people comparing high thread count featherbeds. That's okay, you are still clinically healthy if you don't appreciate other dimensions some products offer.
Falsehoods programmers believe about fonts
It just doesn’t matter… to you. Which is fine. Not everything matters to everyone equally. Typefaces are fundamentally art and they get the same level of appreciation that artwork receives, everything from none to abject worship. Don’t assume that your brain is at all like mine or anyone else’s.