Posted by Ed Seedhouse on 06/08/07 05:40

On Thu, 07 Jun 2007 18:35:14 GMT, "M" <nowhereman@twilightzone.net>
wrote:

>"Ed Seedhouse" <eseedhouse@shaw.ca> wrote in message
>news:183g63lojlrs5h96vvqt84n49qhpj58lud@4ax.com...
>> What you would like is irrelevant. Are you writing the site for
>> yourself or for your visitors? If the latter, then let them decide what
>> fonts they prefer.

>Hmm, not to start a big debate but that's wrong in a lot of cases.
>When you give a business card to someone, the look of that card says
>something about you. There's a whole industry and philosophy to image
>branding.

A business card is paper. The web is not. It's perfectly possible to
"brand" a web page without making a design for paper.

>Do you hand out plain white business cards with plain black text and some
>stickers with graphics, or some pencil crayons, and tell your potential
>client "Here, design your own card."? (Actually, that may be the NEXT BIG
>TREND. Beck's latest CD came with a roll-your-own case liner. . .)

Of course I suggested nothing like that. The web takes graphic images,
it just doesn't display them in the same way as paper, because it isn't
paper. And we have to work with that fact.

>Just because your advertising medium is the web, doesn't necessarily change
>that.

>And that's a good thing for web designers. A plain vanilla site with default
>black text, white background and simple images using only paragraph tags,
>image tags and a few headers is the ultimate "flexible" format. I'm sure
>though that you don't build those for clients with the justification "oh, I
>like to let the end-user decide their own fonts, layout, etc."

Strawman. False alternatives. Good design is a great thing, style is
nice, creativity is excellent. But the fact remains that the web isn't
paper and there's nothing you can do to make it into paper.

People who are good can create good web pages while still working within
the nature of the web.

All creative endeavours have to be done within restrictions. Working
within rules, real artists produce great results. Read some haiku for
instance. Very strict rules, especially in Japanese, but great artists
nevertheless produce great art within those rigid rules.

>Companies aren't going to pay for that.

Most companies don't understand that the web is not paper. That doesn't
turn the web into paper. And it doesn't make these companies right.

>The original OP has a valid concern that is, unfortunately, not easily
>solvable at this time.

Sorry, I disagree. Failing to take into account the nature of your
medium is a sure way to produce lousy results in any medium. The web is
not paper and it isn't going to be paper, and if you insist on treating
it like paper the result is going to be lousy web sites.

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