[HN Gopher] Designing for the Eye: Optical corrections in archit...
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Designing for the Eye: Optical corrections in architecture and
typography
Author : ArmageddonIt
Score : 207 points
Date : 2025-07-15 17:48 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nubero.ch)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nubero.ch)
| isodev wrote:
| This was a fascinating read. Thanks for sharing!
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| I disagree with respect to Microsoft. Steve hated everything that
| worked but was ugly. Windows and Office had a brutalist beauty to
| it that you could fully customize if you desired to do so. Today
| with O365 and Azure it is a parody of its former design. Only
| after its default UI changed from 'dentist office' to 'parade of
| clowns with toasters' did everyone else decide they hated it.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brutalist_architecture
| layer8 wrote:
| I would argue that the Windows 95-2000 era SOTA application
| design, where Windows and Office arguably truly established
| themselves (and became highly customizable), was less brutalist
| than the preceding Windows 3.x design. Incidentally, the Steve
| Jobs quote is from an interview in 1995, so preceding that era.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Yes, WordPerfect and Lotus 123 were the top dogs until MS was
| finally able to eat into their sales. Office wasn't the king
| until '98 or even the 2000 version.
| reconnecting wrote:
| Borland's DOS IDEs represented what we might call brutalism in
| interface design. Windows (after 2000) arbitrarily became more
| like favelas with dozens of unnecessary panels in every
| application, a great example of when features win over
| rationality.
|
| I just realized that I'm not sure if it's Borland or Norton who
| brought the blue interface to DOS first. Does someone remember
| who was first?
|
| For some whom miss this deep blue and cyan.
| https://play.tirreno.com/game
| weinzierl wrote:
| _" I just realized that I'm not sure if it's Borland or
| Norton who brought the blue interface to DOS first."_
|
| Not sure about the blue color specifically but almost all the
| conventions came out of IBM's SAA and CUA initiatives. There
| is still a lot to find about these conventions and for some
| time in the early 90s every computer mag wrote about them.
| When I searched for the original IBM sources a while ago I
| could not find anything.
|
| So, if anyone has a pointer to the original style guide I'd
| be very grateful.
|
| _" Borland's DOS IDEs represented what we might call
| brutalism in interface design."_
|
| Hmm, I think they could be perceived as brutalist nowadays
| because people are not aware of the technical restrictions
| these applications had to work with, but at least Turbo
| Pascal was a marvel of beauty at the time.
|
| _" Windows (after 2000) arbitrarily became more like favelas
| with dozens of unnecessary panels in every application, a
| great example of when features win over rationality."_
|
| I'd call it a slum. The Favela is X11 - poor by definition,
| yet charming in places, sometimes dangerous.
| reconnecting wrote:
| I was digging a little bit further.
|
| Norton Commander released its blue interface in 1986 (1),
| when Borland Pascal didn't have released something that had
| similarities with Norton Commander one year later in 1987,
| it was Borland Pascal 4.0 (2). And here is Pascal 3.0 for
| comparison (3).
|
| UPD:
|
| But now I'm not sure that it was NC first. Here is
| PathMinder (4) from 1984 and IBM FileCommand (5) 1983.
|
| (1) https://winworldpc.com/res/img/screenshots/1x-6e0aba060
| e5238...
|
| (2) https://dosdays.co.uk/media/borland/Turbo%20Pascal/tp4_
| compi...
|
| (3) https://dosdays.co.uk/media/borland/Turbo%20Pascal/tp30
| 2_edi...
|
| (4) https://www.smoliva.blog/img/cc-pathminder.png
|
| (5) https://winworldpc.com/res/img/screenshots/IBM%20FileCo
| mmand...
| XorNot wrote:
| The Ribbon was an enormous backwards step.
| soperj wrote:
| Great article, too bad they had to include Steve Jobs.
|
| "The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste. They
| have absolutely no taste. And what that means is - I don't mean
| that in a small way, I mean that in a big way - in the sense that
| they don't think of original ideas, and they don't bring much
| culture into their product. "
|
| All those original ideas they lifted right from Xerox Parc.
|
| Edit: Sorry, forgot we were talking about design ideas. All those
| original ideas they lifted right from Braun.
| wpm wrote:
| Except the Alto looked and worked nothing like the Lisa OS nor
| the Mac OS.
|
| Its like saying Xerox just lifted it all from the Mother of All
| Demos.
| pcrh wrote:
| Very interesting, thanks!
|
| I am also curious about the relative popularity of typography on
| HN... it seems to gain the interest of HN readers more than most
| other forms of design or art....?
| gorlilla wrote:
| My humble guess is because typography is really just a (
| _mostly_ non-political /religious) form of psychological and
| philosophical debates.
|
| Look at the discussion surrounding the typography on Pope
| Francis' tombstone to see how the typography
| conversation/debate easily transcended the religious background
| it originated from, which seems atypical to me.
| reconnecting wrote:
| OK, can someone please explain to me how the 'arena' swimming
| wear brand chose the kerning for their logo 50 years ago to
| be the way it is now? This 're' combination is killing me
| every time I see it.
| cpa wrote:
| I don't know why but nerds love typography. I sure do :)
|
| Maybe something about the fact that it's familiar for people
| working with computers. It's approachable (needs a keyboard and
| some fonts), familiar (we spend our time typing and reading),
| well defined (it's a succession of a finite number of shapes
| that are also well defined, not as Freeform as a drawing).
| dylan604 wrote:
| There's still people that don't know the difference between
| serif and sans-serif. That's shocking to me, yet just another
| sign of how deep a rabbit hole I find myself with fonts. I've
| done desktop layout and graphic design for print, video, web,
| so working with fonts is without a doubt something I
| absolutely hate. When it comes to computers the top two
| things on my hate list is 1) printing, 2) fonts. PTSD from
| the bad ol' days getting fonts and printers to install, then
| getting the printer to actually work as expected. The amount
| of time I've spent looking over fonts with clients and
| listening to them discuss pros/cons. It all just sends
| shivers up and down the spine.
| reconnecting wrote:
| Come on, I know some EU newspapers that put ads in print
| with DPI below 300. No one care, not the publishers, not
| even the advertisers who pay for that.
| bitwize wrote:
| I'm reminded of how the developers of LilyPond noticed that
| because of the asymmetric appearance of musical notes, they
| needed to be _spaced_ asymmetrically in order to convey the sense
| of "equal spacing" between them to the eye. LilyPond is full of
| little beautification details like that to render scores that are
| pleasing to the eye and read the way musicians expect.
| williamdclt wrote:
| Any link? Sounds interesting!
| opello wrote:
| I was curious and went looking and found these:
|
| * https://lilypond.org/doc/v2.23/Documentation/essay/engravin
| g...
|
| * https://lilypond.org/doc/v2.25/Documentation/snippets/expre
| s...
|
| The documentation shows a number of configuration directives
| to control the display and confer semantics generally with
| the aim of improving readability.
| Lu2025 wrote:
| This made me thinking about broader optical corrections. I got an
| iPhone 16, and the photos look overprocessed. There is a
| cartoonish HD-like feel to them. I understand where developers
| are coming from: our eyes have higher dynamic range than cameras
| so HDR is closer to what we see but still... it doesn't sit right
| with me. I still remember when my family switched from black and
| white TV to a color one. It was an instant improvement and no
| adjustment period was needed. But HDR as a default looks strange.
| Obscurity4340 wrote:
| The huge screens and insanely high resolution HD ends up
| looking hyperreal. Not sure if anyone else has noticed the
| same, but its mildly uncomfortable and makes me want to watch
| less. Its sort of exhausting and overstimulatimg
| pitkali wrote:
| I have to wonder to what extent the strangeness is just
| unfamiliarity.
| saurik wrote:
| I think that's why they explicitly added the story about the
| color TV being an instant improvement.
|
| FWIW, I've felt over the years that if you have to get used
| to it, it probably wasn't that good to begin with: so so many
| things that are totally different I've upgraded to and
| thought "omg this is amazing! how did I ever live before?"
| and, if I have to go back, it takes a long time to get used
| to the bad thing again.
|
| The one example I have off the top of my head: higher
| resolution monitors. I was totally happy with my lower
| resolution monitors; but, the second I tried a higher
| resolution monitor, it _ruined me_ for lower resolution
| monitors. I can totally get used to it again, but it takes a
| long time, and I really don 't want to; upgrading, though, is
| instantaneously better.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| The problem is that there are two things going on.
|
| 1. "HDR" is often referring to a tone mapping to convert the
| 10-14 bits of dynamic range in a camera's raw file into the
| 8bits that fit into a jpeg (and often the screen).
|
| 2. HDR also refers to actually showing more than those 8bits of
| information. Saving more than 8bits in the image and having a
| screen that can show more than 8 bits of color.
|
| #1 is real easy to make look unnatural, and most phones go over
| the top with it. #2 is a straightforward improvement and
| basically always makes the photo better.
| anactofgod wrote:
| "People seem to think that having the internet at their
| fingertips means they no longer need to know anything themselves.
| But in order to understand things, you need a lot of knowledge
| readily available in your head. Only then can the mind make the
| connections between the different points of data and come to new
| insights. This cannot happen when that knowledge is external, in
| a book or on some Wikipedia page that you have to look up first."
|
| Or in an AI model.
| zeckalpha wrote:
| No mention of the Taj Mahal, which famously is not square so it
| appears square.
| necovek wrote:
| I am surprised to read how modern architecture (or font design)
| disregard optical balance, when this is so instrumental to
| looking good: as in, I am not seeing it, but maybe I am looking
| through rose-coloured glasses.
|
| I don't think anyone would call me artistic, even if I dabbled in
| typography (both of the book design and font design variety),
| furniture and interior architecture (some exterior too): but I
| keep needing to draw things starting with pure geometric shapes
| and precise symmetry and then move them around to make it
| appealing even to me.
|
| For instance, other than the obvious curvature in pillars in
| Parthenon, the _spacing_ between them is even more important:
| notice how outward pillars have the next one closer to avoid the
| vast emptiness outside unbalance them.
|
| The same holds true for fonts, both kerning and character design,
| but another thing not mentioned is how medium has influenced the
| design (ink dispersion needs different "holes" in heavy weight
| forms). The same holds for architecture and materials being used.
| hoseja wrote:
| "The most striking features of Gothic architecture are the
| narrow, vertical proportions and the pointed arches. Gothic-era
| writing mirrors these concepts."
|
| They didn't have printing press or some conscious aesthetic
| architecture-typecafe correspondence. That's just how the letters
| evolve if you want to quickly and densely copy them with a quill.
| It's like trying to draw meanings from connections between
| cuneiform and ziggurats.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackletter
|
| "Why do all of this? Because otherwise, the base of the building
| would look like it was sagging, and the columns would look like
| they were about to fall outwards."
|
| Or, you know, it would ACTUALLY sag. The columns would ACTUALLY
| fall outwards.
| adrian_b wrote:
| The constraints for writing with a quill on expensive parchment
| were the same in Northern Europe and in Southern Europe.
|
| Despite that, during the "Gothic" time, the Gothic writing
| style preferred in Northern Europe (Textura quadrata, or
| Textura sine pedibus for the most expensive manuscripts) was
| clearly different from the Gothic writing style preferred in
| Southern Europe (Rotunda), the Northern one replacing all
| curved lines with broken segmented lines and having taller and
| narrower letters, while the Southern one preserved some of the
| curved lines and had wider less tall letters.
|
| The same style differences could be seen in the architecture of
| expensive buildings, like churches, so there is little doubt
| that it was a difference in taste, not a difference caused by
| material constraints. The material constraints only caused both
| styles to use condensed bold letters, together with a lot of
| abbreviations.
| taneq wrote:
| If anyone here's thinking about logo designs, can I offer some
| related advice? Please make your logo fit more-or-less in a box,
| with the center of gravity in the middle of that box. Keep text
| nice and chunky so it can still be read even at low resolutions.
| Don't put a massive block of colour on one side and tiny spidery
| text on the other side because it makes your logo impossible to
| lay out next to anything else without looking lopsided.
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(page generated 2025-07-16 23:02 UTC)