I agree. If most of the people viewing your site/app/whatever are using high DPI screens, use whatever font you want to. Most accusations of 'looks terrible on screens!' apply to low DPI screens (which, I'll admit, most people still have, and will continue to have).
I am going to go even further, and admit most people on those low DPI screens don't think they look that terrible. Designers have extremely high standards, and often err to the side of stylish instead of readable.
You might be surprised how many people prefer 17pt comic sans to the crisp 7pt pale-gray-on-white designers usually label "joy to read" or "beautiful".
Re:Stop Using Arial and Helvetica (2013)
by throwawayish on Monday January 30, 2017 @07:20AM
(#13520567)
> to the crisp 7pt pale-gray-on-white designers usually label "joy to read" or "beautiful".
Perhaps because they are actually neither and many designers are not well-versed in typography. Making text beautiful (but not necessarily readable) is design; making text readable (but not necessarily beautiful) is typography. They of course, overlap, and good typography usually looks good as well.
Also, Arial is among the few fonts that displays right without anti-aliasing (aka XP era). I know people who prefer crisp fonts and have anti-aliasing turned off on their screen for whatever reason. Georgia is inferior in that regard.
Re:Stop Using Arial and Helvetica (2013)
by ieatkittens on Monday January 30, 2017 @07:12AM
(#13520511)
>And as for Arial, most of the attitude directed towards it is nothing more than anti-Microsoft snobbishness.
I disagree. Arial features some truly revolting glyphs. The R being the worst offender. Probably of any font I can think of. The G is also pretty disgusting.
On the other hand I find it hard to make something look bad using only Helvetica.
And as for Arial, most of the attitude directed towards it is nothing more than anti-Microsoft snobbishness.