The true, underlying question is: how will these new fonts subconsciously influence all of our thoughts and behavior? Is this new, marginally more mature and sophisticated forum font all a ploy to make us argue less? To pacify us, like lambs before the slaughter???
Hm, I use Firefox and have the normal, non-bolded font, so maybe it's another factor at work? I'm using the Black GB theme instead of the white, so I don't know if that makes a difference.
Also, this will definitely take some getting used to. They're not bad, just weird.
While it looks good in the text box before posting, once posted it looks a bit too small. As if after hitting "Post Reply" the font size gets bumped down 1.5 points or something.
Hm, I use Firefox and have the normal, non-bolded font, so maybe it's another factor at work? I'm using the Black GB theme instead of the white, so I don't know if that makes a difference.
Also, this will definitely take some getting used to. They're not bad, just weird.
Hmm, interesting. This is a pretty standard install of Firefox afaik, but I'll poke around my settings and see if something's going on at this end.
@reticulate: What OS are you using? This is more likely related to fonts installed on your machine than the browser. Have you ever installed fonts manually?
Who's getting paid for the use of fonts by websites? I always assumed most fonts were just.. free to use. Is there a font foundation that is cashing in big on websites using their fonts?
@onemanarmyy: Fonts are generally not free. Additionally, serving them up to users when they look at your page is not free. Usually, if a site has cool fonts, and they are doing it legally, they are being hosted by an external source, on a different server/set of servers, like Google Fonts or Adobe TypeKit. On the page's load, the website references those fonts on those servers and they load separately, like when you find an image on a website and use the image's URL to show that image on a another website (aka "hotlinking").
Using Google Fonts is free, but those fonts are licensed by their creators to be used freely. Adobe TypeKit, which is what I think GB was using, is not free, and has many (but not all) 'premium', recognizable fonts, which are not free to use. You pay a monthly fee to use it in order to access its library of fonts (in addition to possible bandwidth premiums for a company as large as CBSi). It's sort of like how Netflix gets the rights to movies it didn't make, and then charges you to watch them.
The font Giant Bomb used to use is Jubilat. Apparently it was also used by Bernie Sander's presidential campaign. Maybe they raised the price of it since that?
@onemanarmyy: There are quite a few fonts out there with licenses that allow you to use them free of charge, but there are a lot of people and companies out there that make money by designing fonts and licensing them out for people to use. If you're really interested in establishing a brand identity for your company or product, you're probably going to want to go out there and license a set of unique fonts to help distinguish yourself instead of just using Times New Roman and Open Sans.
Monotype is by far the biggest font foundry out there (they're actually a publicly traded company), but there are plenty of others out there producing fonts and a lot of them do expect to get paid.
EDIT: Actually, if you wanted to be 100% legit, even Times New Roman is technically still a proprietary typeface owned by Monotype. It's licensed out by Microsoft and Apple, and those licenses generally permit you to use the font any way you want if you're working on a Windows or OS X machine. However, I guess if you wanted to be completely free and clear legally, you would probably still want to pay for your own license.
@kcin: Ah so it's very possible that they switched from Adobe TypeKit to Google Fonts right now?
How does this work with programs like Microsoft Word? Do they use an external source as well or does microsoft host their own fonts?
Not quite. Where a font is still hosted, they actually switched from externally-hosted fonts to fonts they are hosting themselves - some of the fonts are now on the same server(s) as the rest of the site (the serif headline font is hosted). What they did do for the copy, though (the text we're reading and writing) is switch to fonts that the user has on their machine only - no more hosted fonts. This cuts down on load times. First, they try and load your system OS's primary font - fonts that have been designed for computer screens, will 'match' the rest of your computing experience, and are almost certainly there, on your machine. Website fonts are generally part of a list of hierarchical preference: "I want Font A, but if the user doesn't have it use Font B, if they don't have that use Font C, and if they have none of these use whatever font they have in this style." When a font is hosted, the website first retrieves the font, and then it tries to load it. An externally-hosted font can take longer to load than one hosted with the rest of the site, or it can be faster if the server the site is hosted on is slow - point is, it's an additional thing to load, increases the overall size of the page, and it's a little unpredictable. If it doesn't have any server-side font dependencies, it hopes YOU have the font, on your computer.
That's also how Word works: it only loads fonts you have installed on your computer.
Looks a bit thin and blurry, but that's Windows for you. The font in the message composer itself is pretty nice though.
I'm generally not a fan of changes like this because the preinstalled fonts on OSes are fucking terrible, but this isn't so bad, readability issues aside.
@kasaioni: Have you heard of the term "Greeking"? It is a common practice of using dummy text for printing and typesetting. Before desktop publishing, specimen books were printed to showcase a typeface or a family of fonts. It was used to move focus on layout and design instead of the words being said. I thought it would be a nod for graphic and web designers. I guess I should said that beforehand and used one paragraph instead of five to show off how it looked in a regular, bold and italics. I guess posts can be deleted without notice.
Personally I think that the fonts are too small and hard to read. The cynic in me is telling me that they are using smaller fonts create more open space for ads. Since I am premium member, I don't see them but just a thought. Maybe it's a sign of the times and GB is putting more focus on video content than written content. Giant Bomb as website has maintained good webdesign practices in terms of layout design and navigation. Change is okay as long as it does not negatively affect readability.
As someone who works with UX and CX a fair bit I'd say the default font is slightly too small. Headings are fine but default in threads etc. is slightly squint-inducing.
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