A sentence I wouldn't have expected to encounter today:
"A failure to really dig in to the buttcrack creates a bold spot, but even worse, it de-emphasizes the B-ness."
Sites like this are fun. I don't have the actual knowledge to tell if the commentary is insightful or informative but it's usually a good time when you get to look closely at something you take for granted.
This is kind of a seminal resource for a lot of new type-designers. This appearing on hn only for everyone to moan about how the mobile site is lacking kinda makes me feel like I should spend less time on here
Not too long ago there was a submission of a font-editor[1] and I gave it a shot trying things out, just to realize, that my creations looked off and ugly, not really understanding why. This helps a lot. So much nuance to so many things....
The designer obviously knows a thing or two. I enjoyed the fun presentation that others seem to dislike.
Where I ran into trouble was the readability of the annotations on the visuals. The tiny font combined with the low contrast was too much for me. I found myself squinting and trying to get close to my monitor. Eventually I had to move on, even though I was enjoying the content.
Please don't let the comments deter you from giving the site a try! Ok navigation is finicky on mobile but this isn't a blog post, it's quirky, I find the humor funny and the subject matter deserves some artistic liberty on the presentation side
I ask genuinely: what is the value -- in what way does it "fit" so well?
"Custom navigation" means I as a reader need to split my focus between learning how this thing works, and consuming the information presented, which is presumably the goal of this page. I can't say for sure because the instant my screen started scrolling the opposite axis I smashed the back button.
Pick a lane: this kind of stuff is fine as a "design" showpiece, but if the goal of a page is to convey information, why introduce distractions over sticking with familiar patterns?
> I can't say for sure because the instant my screen started scrolling the opposite axis I smashed the back button.
> I ask genuinely: what is the value -- in what way does it "fit" so well?
This is a you problem. Its self-evident to anyone willing to explore their world in an incredibly low-stakes manner, and its pretty much pointless to describe or debate the merits to someone able but unwilling to experience it themselves.
"This is a you problem" is quite a nothingburger of a statement. Every single problem every single person has is personal. Hence why I asked a good faith question -- to try and understand someone else's perspective. You should try it some time.
We're all talking about our preferences here. Do you mean to come off so aggressive and dismissive?
I firmly disagree the discussion is meritless; I'm autistic, and it's much more taxing for me to navigate the page in a completely non-standard way. Avoiding overstimulation is not "low stakes" for me.
Surely I'm not the only one who feels this way, and surely there's someone who could commiserate or at least willing to have a dialogue or otherwise value my experience. If you don't value it -- well that's a "you" problem.
Snapchat is the ultimate example of how intuitive UX doesn't matter as much as we get carried away thinking. Of course it matters. But not as religiously as we think.
in other words, it's not that deep. The site is fun and you can figure it out.
Sorry to say I've never used snapchat, so I'm not able to understand your comparison.
Sure, I am perfectly capable of figuring out the site. But I won't trouble myself with it. My loss it seems!
And lastly, the person I was replying to claimed the design "fit the content so well" or something to that effect, which communicates a certain depth, contrary to your claim. I was genuinely trying to understand what I'm missing out on.
Fair points. in rereading the comments, I think "fits the content so well is in relation to the comment that comment replied to: the content being quirky and comical. So the navigation being non-standard is on brand.
and this is different from your point which maybe is "how does this help me understand fonts better?" which is fair.
Thanks for the added context. I obviously missed the nuance because I ragequit the page, so your perspective does help answer my question.
I can understand the perspective that something whimsical might appeal to a certain group and even enhance the experience; in fact I usually enjoy non-standard game designs, and in general I really appreciate subversion in most media I consume. I think however when it comes to educational or info-dense resources, I prefer the UX to be minimally distracting.
I use NoScript on desktop and was confronted with a complete jumble of words overlaying each other, each individual piece apparently word salad. I can't even understand what the intended purpose of the page is. My best guess is that it's trying to demonstrate a font... ?
Its not even just mobile. Scrolling down on my desktop using the scroll wheel... Page goes down, then right, then down. I find it disorienting and completely turns me away from the site. I've seen it before and every time, it's a net negative to the site in question; sometimes a lot.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that the author does not in fact specialise in web design, and thus its quite expected that when they do something unusual that it won't work for some portion of the audience.
This could have easily been a youtube short or whatever 'vine offshoot' is your particular favourite flavour.
On one hand, videos are terrible for accessibility. On the other hand, by being a website, in theory this stands a better shot. And yet, someone on a mobile phone probably has a much worse experience trying to consume this content than the equivalent as a series of shorts, one for each letter.
I don't know what conclusions we are meant to draw. I just found it an interesting realisation.
This page works beautifully in my iPhone. As I scroll down, the content slides and animates. I actually came here to say that I’m stunned that this effect can be good in mobile, only to find out your comment :D
I'm on iPhone too; I'm referring to the way scrolling down with your finger animates the content sideways, which I really don't think works well — it would have been better to just be able to scroll sideways.
It is too annoying to carefully scroll to the small ranges at which texts are visible, with a custom horizontal scroll, to fish out small bits of text, which do not even seem to be written well. And that is after enabling JS, without which it is broken, yet not obviously (not much more than with JS). Websites about design and typography tend to be broken and illegible, but this one seems to stand out even among those.
But as with quite a few of other such websites, disabling CSS actually renders it easily legible and navigable, even without JS.
In visual design, it is things that occupy space. The areas left unoccupied by things are called negative space.
So if you hang a massive painting, that painting takes up positive space. The parts of the wall that are not covered by that painting make up the negative space.
I've just never encountered a situation where that's a necessary distinction. If I say "the painting takes up too much space on the wall" I don't need to say "the painting has too much positive space" nor "the painting removes too much negative space".
If you are doing visual design, if you want to call out the parts of the space you are working in where you _aren't doing anything_, that is the 'negative space'.
If you are producing a letterform, all the parts of the object you are producing which is not filled by letter is the 'negative space'. The "space" is the whole area, including the letter.
People intentionally play with the distinction in optical illusions:
Just last week I was hanging photos with my wife in our home and after she had proposed a placement I told her "I don't like the balance of the negative space there". I could have said "I don't feel like the parts of the wall not taken up by photos are balanced there" but "negative space" is a convenient abstraction. (Note that this is different from the photos themselves being unbalanced, which is also a concern but was not a problem then.)
Think of it like a foreach loop. Sure, it's equivalent to the corresponding for(;;)-style loop but it's also a convenient mental shortcut.
I think this is a good example of the specific, limited way in which this phrase is useful. It's similar to the - very specific - phrase "price point", which people often use to just mean generic "price" now when they want to sound businessy.
Communities don't generally invent jargon for no reason, and a lot of things that people see as gatekeeping and shibboleths are just terms that save a lot of time in communication between people who know what they mean.
If you are a programmer, terms like "imperative" or "declarative" are extremely opaque to outsiders, but convey a lot of information efficiently if you know what they mean.
As someone who has designed multiple type families, I might be biased, but this is wonderful. I'm going to send this to any aspiring type designers I meet, or anyone who's curious about what goes into shaping letters.
I do find this kind of analysis fascinating, and yet (personal choice in creative outputs aside) I also find what seems to be the increased use of swearing in blog posts/website copy to be, frankly, lazy.
A sentence I wouldn't have expected to encounter today:
Sites like this are fun. I don't have the actual knowledge to tell if the commentary is insightful or informative but it's usually a good time when you get to look closely at something you take for granted.This is kind of a seminal resource for a lot of new type-designers. This appearing on hn only for everyone to moan about how the mobile site is lacking kinda makes me feel like I should spend less time on here
Not too long ago there was a submission of a font-editor[1] and I gave it a shot trying things out, just to realize, that my creations looked off and ugly, not really understanding why. This helps a lot. So much nuance to so many things....
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45347072
The designer obviously knows a thing or two. I enjoyed the fun presentation that others seem to dislike.
Where I ran into trouble was the readability of the annotations on the visuals. The tiny font combined with the low contrast was too much for me. I found myself squinting and trying to get close to my monitor. Eventually I had to move on, even though I was enjoying the content.
Please don't let the comments deter you from giving the site a try! Ok navigation is finicky on mobile but this isn't a blog post, it's quirky, I find the humor funny and the subject matter deserves some artistic liberty on the presentation side
Its notable that on desktop, the navigation is excellent. Custom navigation is rarely great, but this fits the content so well.
> on desktop, the navigation is excellent
https://files.catbox.moe/kzqxcw.png
How am I meant to use this? None of the sidebar text is clickable.
Fancy navigation isn't worth a damn to me without graceful degradation.
I ask genuinely: what is the value -- in what way does it "fit" so well?
"Custom navigation" means I as a reader need to split my focus between learning how this thing works, and consuming the information presented, which is presumably the goal of this page. I can't say for sure because the instant my screen started scrolling the opposite axis I smashed the back button.
Pick a lane: this kind of stuff is fine as a "design" showpiece, but if the goal of a page is to convey information, why introduce distractions over sticking with familiar patterns?
> I can't say for sure because the instant my screen started scrolling the opposite axis I smashed the back button.
> I ask genuinely: what is the value -- in what way does it "fit" so well?
This is a you problem. Its self-evident to anyone willing to explore their world in an incredibly low-stakes manner, and its pretty much pointless to describe or debate the merits to someone able but unwilling to experience it themselves.
"This is a you problem" is quite a nothingburger of a statement. Every single problem every single person has is personal. Hence why I asked a good faith question -- to try and understand someone else's perspective. You should try it some time.
We're all talking about our preferences here. Do you mean to come off so aggressive and dismissive?
I firmly disagree the discussion is meritless; I'm autistic, and it's much more taxing for me to navigate the page in a completely non-standard way. Avoiding overstimulation is not "low stakes" for me.
Surely I'm not the only one who feels this way, and surely there's someone who could commiserate or at least willing to have a dialogue or otherwise value my experience. If you don't value it -- well that's a "you" problem.
Snapchat is the ultimate example of how intuitive UX doesn't matter as much as we get carried away thinking. Of course it matters. But not as religiously as we think.
in other words, it's not that deep. The site is fun and you can figure it out.
Sorry to say I've never used snapchat, so I'm not able to understand your comparison.
Sure, I am perfectly capable of figuring out the site. But I won't trouble myself with it. My loss it seems!
And lastly, the person I was replying to claimed the design "fit the content so well" or something to that effect, which communicates a certain depth, contrary to your claim. I was genuinely trying to understand what I'm missing out on.
Fair points. in rereading the comments, I think "fits the content so well is in relation to the comment that comment replied to: the content being quirky and comical. So the navigation being non-standard is on brand.
and this is different from your point which maybe is "how does this help me understand fonts better?" which is fair.
Thanks for the added context. I obviously missed the nuance because I ragequit the page, so your perspective does help answer my question.
I can understand the perspective that something whimsical might appeal to a certain group and even enhance the experience; in fact I usually enjoy non-standard game designs, and in general I really appreciate subversion in most media I consume. I think however when it comes to educational or info-dense resources, I prefer the UX to be minimally distracting.
I use NoScript on desktop and was confronted with a complete jumble of words overlaying each other, each individual piece apparently word salad. I can't even understand what the intended purpose of the page is. My best guess is that it's trying to demonstrate a font... ?
I use NoHTML on Firefox 56 and it's just a blank white page?
”I completely broke the website and now it looks completely broken.”
This is pretty great. Might have been better to see before my typeface layperson's implementation of these guys: https://letterspractice.com/dbg/lp
(note: root site not actually ready for publish. don't click too many things or you could ruin my life (mostly a joke about the ruination))
Not the type theory we wanted, but the type theory we needed.
Did not expect Sesame Street for fonts. Excellent.
Also by this guy: Futurefonts.com Lots of great cheap in-progress fonts with documentation of the process of creating them.
It’s unfathomable to me that people are still designing web pages that are borderline unusable on mobile in 2025
Its not even just mobile. Scrolling down on my desktop using the scroll wheel... Page goes down, then right, then down. I find it disorienting and completely turns me away from the site. I've seen it before and every time, it's a net negative to the site in question; sometimes a lot.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that the author does not in fact specialise in web design, and thus its quite expected that when they do something unusual that it won't work for some portion of the audience.
It works fine on some mobiles.
I tried scrolling right and left and reloaded the page a couple times.
Turns out scrolling down is translated to scrolling left.
It works well for me on mobile
This could have easily been a youtube short or whatever 'vine offshoot' is your particular favourite flavour.
On one hand, videos are terrible for accessibility. On the other hand, by being a website, in theory this stands a better shot. And yet, someone on a mobile phone probably has a much worse experience trying to consume this content than the equivalent as a series of shorts, one for each letter.
I don't know what conclusions we are meant to draw. I just found it an interesting realisation.
This page works beautifully in my iPhone. As I scroll down, the content slides and animates. I actually came here to say that I’m stunned that this effect can be good in mobile, only to find out your comment :D
I'm on iPhone too; I'm referring to the way scrolling down with your finger animates the content sideways, which I really don't think works well — it would have been better to just be able to scroll sideways.
As I scroll down, the content moves side to side which is vomitous and disorienting.
(2020), check https://ohnotype.co/blog/tagged/teaching for letters other than A.
It is too annoying to carefully scroll to the small ranges at which texts are visible, with a custom horizontal scroll, to fish out small bits of text, which do not even seem to be written well. And that is after enabling JS, without which it is broken, yet not obviously (not much more than with JS). Websites about design and typography tend to be broken and illegible, but this one seems to stand out even among those.
But as with quite a few of other such websites, disabling CSS actually renders it easily legible and navigable, even without JS.
> What we want is a balance between the top and bottom negative spaces.
One thing I never understand is why they say "negative spaces" instead of just "spaces".
In visual design, it is things that occupy space. The areas left unoccupied by things are called negative space.
So if you hang a massive painting, that painting takes up positive space. The parts of the wall that are not covered by that painting make up the negative space.
I've just never encountered a situation where that's a necessary distinction. If I say "the painting takes up too much space on the wall" I don't need to say "the painting has too much positive space" nor "the painting removes too much negative space".
If you are doing visual design, if you want to call out the parts of the space you are working in where you _aren't doing anything_, that is the 'negative space'.
If you are producing a letterform, all the parts of the object you are producing which is not filled by letter is the 'negative space'. The "space" is the whole area, including the letter.
People intentionally play with the distinction in optical illusions:
https://inthewhitespace.com/2021/11/17/what-it-means-to-be-i...
Just last week I was hanging photos with my wife in our home and after she had proposed a placement I told her "I don't like the balance of the negative space there". I could have said "I don't feel like the parts of the wall not taken up by photos are balanced there" but "negative space" is a convenient abstraction. (Note that this is different from the photos themselves being unbalanced, which is also a concern but was not a problem then.)
Think of it like a foreach loop. Sure, it's equivalent to the corresponding for(;;)-style loop but it's also a convenient mental shortcut.
Henry Moore is a sculptor that uses the negative space a lot. It can be useful to refer to the "holes" in the sculpture
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/henry-moor...
I think this is a good example of the specific, limited way in which this phrase is useful. It's similar to the - very specific - phrase "price point", which people often use to just mean generic "price" now when they want to sound businessy.
I guess one reason is that adding "negative" turns the generic noun "space" into a specific term of art. A shibboleth, if you will.
Communities don't generally invent jargon for no reason, and a lot of things that people see as gatekeeping and shibboleths are just terms that save a lot of time in communication between people who know what they mean.
If you are a programmer, terms like "imperative" or "declarative" are extremely opaque to outsiders, but convey a lot of information efficiently if you know what they mean.
I agree.
As someone who has designed multiple type families, I might be biased, but this is wonderful. I'm going to send this to any aspiring type designers I meet, or anyone who's curious about what goes into shaping letters.
Great content, terrible form.
I do find this kind of analysis fascinating, and yet (personal choice in creative outputs aside) I also find what seems to be the increased use of swearing in blog posts/website copy to be, frankly, lazy.
swiped to scroll down. page scrolled right. did not appreciate