They overthought the whole thing. It's the usual design by committee mess you get when you take something that is undeniably simple (like a blog) and you elevate it to something that is not.
First of all, it looks like something straight out of the 90s that didn't age well.
Secondly the choice of a sans-serif font for a text is questionable and the choice of Open Sans in particular is inexcusable.
The other day I was reading an article on my Nexus 5 and I couldn't help but notice that the text is just too small/thin and the whole thing is just spaced wrong.
It's just too thin. There's a reason thin fonts on mobile OSes are used only for big text like date and time. Thin fonts are difficult to read, Open Sans particularly so.
Hmmm.. That's strange considering Steve Matteson (the type designer)[1] optimized the typeface for both mobile and web use. Perhaps the mobile browser you're using is rending it quite differently.
I'd love to know what browser / os you're using. I'm running a galaxy s3 in 'tablet mode' (lcd density set to 160 from 320) and the text renders nicely.
Discussion is veering: This is neither a Techcrunch article nor a discussion of this particular design which pleased the customer. It is an article about a website design workflow from a pattern lab† viewpoint.
pattern lab is collection of PHP tools for making web sites from organized, abstracted components.
I dig the new design, it's better than the previous one and it seems much faster too (not sure if this is because of the new design but that's how it feels to me). Good work and a nice write-up.
Thanks for sharing. I always like Brad's posts, he does a good job explaining his process. Some here may disagree with parts of it, but it's nice that he takes time out to show us all of this. Thanks Brad!
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[ 387 ms ] story [ 937 ms ] threadhttp://www.fastcodesign.com/1662630/is-undesigned-the-next-g...
First of all, it looks like something straight out of the 90s that didn't age well. Secondly the choice of a sans-serif font for a text is questionable and the choice of Open Sans in particular is inexcusable.
The other day I was reading an article on my Nexus 5 and I couldn't help but notice that the text is just too small/thin and the whole thing is just spaced wrong.
If you ask me it' s a 4 out of 10 design wise.
1: http://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/Open+Sans
Spacing between words seem a tad insufficient, font color a shade too light, and line-height a step too tight.
With that said, it does look better on retina iPad than on my 23" ips display. (matte finish).
pattern lab is collection of PHP tools for making web sites from organized, abstracted components.
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† http://pattern-lab.info/ (MIT license, lives on github)
i find it interesting how they discuss and plan about fonts/colors down to the wire for UI sake, and yet miss the "bigger" picture of readability.