flag of the United Kingdom
URBAN
Mainframe

Poor Trebuchet

Date:  Tue, 11th-May-2004prevnext

Tags: Commentary, Website Development

Andrei Herasimchuk over at Design by Fire doesn't seem to like Trebuchet which, as it happens, is my chosen font for this website.

Herasimchuk advises web-developers not to use it and goes on to list several reasons why:

Certain characters are "too round", namely "e", "o", "a", "c", "d", "p" and "q" - now I could be mistaken, but these characters are all born of a round shape, aren't they?

"The 'e', due to the short cut in the leg, almost feels like it's going to fall over to the right" - does it? Perhaps your monitor is crooked Andrei.

Other characters are "too sharp" ("v", "w" and "x") - too sharp? These are angular characters, what do you expect?

Now I have a great deal of respect for you Andrei. The design of your website is sublime and your essays are perceptive, thought-provoking and, more often than not, in-line with my own opinions.

But I have to defend Trebuchet from your attack, it is but one of a limited collection of fonts available to web-designers. It is light-hearted, easy on the eye and not overly stylised. Give it a break.

You can comment on this entry, or read what others have written (5 comments).


W3C VALIDATE XHTML
W3C VALIDATE CSS