If you want good type on Retina displays, stop discussing hinting et al. Just search for faces that happen to look good. Like the old days. link
Sharpness of type is being celebrated. But that’s not a quality in itself. Just looks cold. Type needs a certain amount of fuzziness. Warmth link
Forget hinting. Low resolution needs it. iPad1+2 just needs bigger sizes. iPad3 wants old school fonts, a bit bolder: http://bit.ly/FQteUa link
I have another suspicion about typography on the iPad3. It needs organic noise, otherwise it all looks like dead plastic. #NewAesthetic link
Suspicion3: Hinting corrects a distortion—since there is no distortion on Retina, the hinting becomes a distortion? s.NeueHelvetica+iPhone4. link
New iPad is almost 'too' sharp. Fonts were never meant to be so crisp. They're not on paper. Wondering if devs should add slight distress. link
New devices and new screens are comparable to different qualities of paper: sometimes the type needs tiny adjustments to get best result. link
It's the synthetic sharpness and the backlight that makes both system fonts look plump and print fonts over designed. #Retina #Typography link
If type looks skinny on iPad3, it's not display's, type's or rasterizer's fault. The typographer simply made the wrong choice, ... link
"We need to optimize our fonts for the new retina displays" – dumbest comment of the week. link
Comments
Fonts were never meant to be so crisp
I agree with you except for the comment about desktop hardware capabilities. There is a fairly significant percentage who care about these things, specifically, those that deal in 3d modelling, animation, and video production. I see desktops further defining themselves as a niche market, used only by those who do that kind of work while everyone else moves towards tablets.
Also, the monitor, to a point, is only as good as the hardware that supports it. I suspect it will be some time before video cards capable of retina-quality display make their way into the average consumer laptop or desktop.
-webkit-font-smoothing
setting tonone
(details on that here). When smoothing is turned off in this manner, the hinting information kicks in similarly to the situation I mentioned before.Why Retina Isn’t Enough — John Brownlee, for Cult of Mac
But now that we’ve seen retina do we just give up making screen-optimized typefaces? We’ve got a ways to go until the majority is on retina screens, and even there, typefaces like Elena still perform better than say, Baskerville. Am I full of crap?
A screen display that emits light will not do a good job of showing what a piece of reflective printing will look like, before one inks up the plates.
However… http://www.engadget.com/2012/11/05/japan-display-shows-low-power-reflective-lcd/
Meanwhile, check out tnr.com for extensive use of Baskerville text. Might be just me, but I find it surprisingly pleasant to read.