[thelist] Type History (was: Contributions for an article wan ted)

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Adrian Roselli [SMTP:Roselli@AlgonquinStudios.com]
> Sent:	Monday, March 20, 2000 4:49 PM
> To:	'thelist@lists.evolt.org'
> Subject:	Re: [thelist] Type History (was: Contributions for an
> article wan ted)
> 
> 
> *** Warning : This message originates from the Internet ***
> 
> "The union of uppercase and lowercase roman letters..."
> 
> - The Elements of Typographic Style, section 3.4.1, by Robert 
> Bringhurst
> 
[Burns, Martin]  
There's an exceptional visual example in
Spiekermann & Ginger's "Stop stealing sheep and learn how type works"


> we all used to swing from trees and fling feces at each other when 
> we were monkies, but we've rmoved the hand grips from our 
> ceilings, haven't we?  the feces part still holds true, though...
> 
[Burns, Martin] 
On *so* many levels

> > From: James Spahr <james@designframe.com>
> > people are more
> > comfortable reading what ever typeface/ capitalization scheme that
> > they have grown accustom to.
> 
[Burns, Martin]
This is undoubtably significant. However, how many people (COBOL
coders excepted) read all caps, all day, every day.

There's an interesting discussion lurking there. Accustomisation is
vital, as all us Jakob Nielsen fans can quote chapter and verse
on. However, what do you do if what people are used to is hard
to use? For example, Nielsen will tell you to use blue and purple
for links as that's what people are (were, certainly, don't know if it
still holds) used to. But the a-priori best colour for an unvisited
link is red - standard human vision studies will tell you that
red colours move forward in human visual perception and get
attention, whereas blue recedes.

So which is the best to use? Where you can guarantee that you're
the most used interface (eg intranets), there isn't a problem, but
on the internet?

Cheers
Martin
(off to London for a few days & away from home & work accounts)  


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