Type design hot takes

Claudio Piccinini

Russell McGorman said:

I think what I was getting at was that the presence of non-standard ligatures for the sake of ligatures can be a problem in type meant for immersive reading. Sometimes they can be distracting and disrupt the flow of reading. A former colleague of mine said he hates ligatures. I asked why. He said because they're distracting. The thing is, when he has read things I had sent him, he just didn't notice the ligatures, which suggests that his problem wasn't ligatures per se, but ligatures in typefaces where he happens to notice them. 

Clearly. That is the case.
But for this very reason I am now quite unsure if Ray is serious about Small Capitals.
Clearly they are not something mandatory or even useful in a typeface meant for large, titling sizes, unless the content is intended to be formatted in an advanced way.

The rest of Ray's "hot takes" (no equivalent in italian, I think!) seem more related to taste, however.

Ray Larabie

@Claudio Piccinini The term hot take is sometimes used to mean an unpopular and controversial opinion. It's not necessarily a differing opinion for the sake of attention. For example, on Reddit, someone's post or comment containing an unpopular opinion might be called a hot take. In other words, it's used as emphatic term for an unpopular opinion.

Small-caps are a popular feature, clients request them in typefaces and typographers are taught to use them. I assume that most people like them. I think small caps are unattractive. I believe they're necessary to provide another type of emphasis after italic, bold, and bold-italic. They're often used decoratively but I can't see the appeal. Sometimes I think it can look charming in titles if the smaller letters are aligned to the middle like in the Jurassic Park logo. But on the baseline I think it always looks awkward.

Chris Lozos

Smallcaps are a tool that can be used well or abused, or even ignored. We cannot make up for the skills of the user. We can only do a good job in making them available for those who need them. It is like eating utensils, most of the time, a knife and fork will do but if you are eating soup, you need a spoon. The folks who never eat soup should not control the soup eaters needs.

Michael Rafailyk

Ray Larabie said:
Sometimes I think it can look charming in titles if the smaller letters are aligned to the middle like in the Jurassic Park logo.

Interesting. It could be a gpos implementation in a Stylistic Set to vertically align the Small Caps at the level of Capitals. Sorry for the offtopic comment.

feature ss01 {
  featureNames {
    name "Small Caps centered on Capitals";
  };

  @sc = [A.sc-Z.sc]; # +all others .sc
  pos @sc <0 50 0 0>;

}

Abdurrahman Hanif

Dave Crossland said:

André G. Isaak said:

Addendum: The first time I saw this I hadn't noticed the location Yogyakarta. I now can't help wondering whether this face wasn't designed by someone whose native script was Javanese rather than Latin.

Ummm.... have you been to Indonesia?

When I went there, I was sad to see how little the local script is used. I don't think such people exist...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Javanese_script#Decline

Agree Dave, Yogyakarta is the "capital" of Javanese Culture and it is mandatory to every government building used the Javanese Script yet you already see not many using the script, and even some road signs that have Javanese script are often poorly written with some mistakes. 

The problem there are not many font options for the Javanese scripts, because the engineering of Javanese fonts that not easy to learn, and foundries here often not look into making Javanese fonts. But now Indonesian type designers here start developing Javanese fonts to create more options for users and hopefully, the scripts can be used in many public spaces.

Dave Crossland

Good to hear things are improving since 2009, when I was last there

Cristóbal Alarcón

People that aren't into design generally speaking don't care about what's wrong and right in typography. They just care if it they like it and if they can read it.