Hi, On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 12:22 AM, Max <[email protected]> wrote: > The choice of the 'right' fonts is very situation-dependent. A font that's > perfect for body copy might be terrible for headlines, and vice versa. > Therefore, the selection of typefaces can not be left to the operating > system, because as you rightly pointed out, it will always use the same > default font. While that default font probably isn't the worst of all fonts > for any situation, it is certainly not the best. > > However, delivering the best experience must be our goal. Therefore, it is > important that the decisions which font to use in which situation is > consciously made. Using a font stack is just a good practice to ensure that > users who can't load webfonts or whatever still get a font that was picked > carefully to suit the situation. That way, we as designers can still deliver > the best possible experience even to users who for whatever reason can't use > our first font choice.
While this theory makes total sense, the practice seems to show something different: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Typography_refresh/Font_choice/Test Regardless of the conscious decisions of Wikimedia designers, it seems that such decisions are overridden by the conscious decisions of OS and browser vendors. As long as web fonts are out of the table, it seems that the difference between "sans-serif" and a full fledged font stack including proprietary fonts is none for the majority of users (Windows and Android), slight for the minority of Linux users, and then, yes, Apple users get Helvetica Neue instead of Helvetica. Therefore, if the criteria is consistency across platforms, "sans-serif" looks like the closest match, unless you really care about Linux / LibreOffice users and want to suggest Arimo / Liberation Sans to them. If the criteria is usability and accessibility, Helvetica has been the default font for Apple and many others for years, I guess the basics are well covered there. If the criteria is "visual identity", then I wonder what differentiation can be achieved around plain Helvetica, the main choice for sans. And Apple users get Helvetica Neue injected by more and more publishers, starting with Apple itself, so I also wonder how distinctive would Wikipedia with Helvetica Neue look to them. Therefore, even if "sans-serif" as simplest font stack sounds uncool, maybe it is still the right thing to do. -- Quim _______________________________________________ Design mailing list [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/design
