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Comment by ktpsns | Hacker News Reader

I enjoy typography and design, but I don't like the blind realisation of obviously bad design decisions. Take https://d31td5fkd89rr1.cloudfront.net/assets/images/blog/des... -- the ingredient list is sick itself, it should not be an unformatted block of text but at least a proper list. They are designers, why don't they invent an informative way to display ingredients? My feeling is that they have to support the attempt of their client to hide information. I would not want to do such a designers job, supporting bad intentions.

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In a vacuum a list is preferable, but I doubt that's possible in the vast majority of cases. Take the label you linked: space on packaging is limited, so you can't just make it run on forever. You could divide the list in multiple columns (with clear dividers to make the reading direction unambiguous), but some words are much longer than others ("PEG-120 Methyl Glucose Dioleate" vs "Allantoin"). You can't reorder the list either because the order is legally mandated.

You might be able to make a multi-column list where most list items run for multiple lines, but that isn't that much better than the block of text and still takes up more space (space better used for branding)

To add to this, because the list is ordered, a multi-column list would create ambiguity in the order of ingredients.

The change in font to help legibility is the best option in this use case – and I was really surprised to see how effective it was!

Not that someone won't always be there to do it, but about six years ago I decided as a designer / engineer, that I'm accountable and won't purposefully implement dark UX patterns after being asked to add a feature to a deposition platform that I was working on to score "truthfulness" of statements based off "microtremmor lie detection". A totally bullshit science. I fell out with my cofounders over that and left the company. Also no weapons or oil and gas.

If we all just said we wouldn't do shit like that, I think we can make changes. I mean someone's still going to design discount toilet paper rolls that are 5 sheets but look like a full roll, and I guess cram the text together on bathroom cleaners so you don't know how you're poisoning yourself or that two almost identical looking cleaners contain ammonia vs. bleach so you mustard gas your roommate.

Design matters! Refuse to make crap!

http://www.designishistory.com/1960/first-things-first/

Thank you for your decision.

From Milton Glaser’s essay, Ambiguity & Truth:

> Let me read you the road to hell, a series of questions that become more difficulty the deeper you go. the first couple are easy, would you—

> 1. Design a package to look larger on the shelf?

> 2. Do an ad for a slow-moving, boring film to make it seem like a lighthearted comedy?

> 3. Design a crest for a new vineyard to suggest that it’s been in business for a long time?

> 4. Design a jacket for a book whose sexual content you find personally repellent?

> 5. Design an advertising campaign for a company with a history of known discrimination in minority hiring?

> 6. Design a package for a cereal aimed at children, which has low nutritional value and high sugar content?

> 7. Design a line of t-shirts for a manufacturer who employs child labor?

> 8. Design a promotion for a diet product that you know doesn’t work?

> 9. Design an ad for a political candidate whose policies you believe would be harmful to the general public?

> 10. Design a brochure piece for an SuV that turned over more frequently than average in emergency conditions and caused the death of 150 people?

> 11. Design an ad for a product whose continued use might cause the user’s death?

> When i gave this test to students between the ages of 21 to 28, i discovered that in a group of 20, 3 or 4 of them were willing to go all the way—that is, participate in advertising a product whose use might cause the user’s death. these were generally idealistic young people as yet seemingly uncorrupted by money or professional life. However, they drew the line at harming their family, friends or neighbors.

https://www.miltonglaser.com/files/Essays-Ambiguity-8192.pdf

I've never seen a (printed) product label with the ingredient list as a formatted list. They are always a comma-separated free-flowing text chunk. I guess this saves space.

A big fat bullet instead of a comma wouldn't cost much space, but I don't think I've seen it used. People are perhaps scared of innovating when there are legal requirements that they haven't referred to recently, while they are fairly confident that what they've always done is compatible with the rules.

By the way, what is it with a large proportion of labels containing either an asterisk but no footnote, or a footnote but no asterisk in the text for it to refer to? I suppose it tells us something about the workflow they use for producing these labels.

I think it's less about fear of innovation and more about other constraints like space and readability.

A comma in most condensed sans serif collections like those used for nutrition labels (Helvetica, Univers, et al.) takes up less space and is more readable than a bullet or other glyph.

Here's a quick example using Roboto Condensed and the ingredients for Fruit Loops. The bullets are longer or harder to read. (Using Roboto Condensed because it's free so others can test with it and it's comparable to Helvetica/Univers).

Sample: https://i.imgur.com/HeYTdWr.png

You often find ingredients formatted as a table on bottled water labels. For example, https://strugglingthroughtofitness.files.wordpress.com/2015/....

That's not the ingredients that's the nutritional information. The ingredients list for that bottle would be:

Ingredients: Water

Check out the ingredient list for RxBars!

https://www.rxbar.com/shop.html

Labels on products have limtied available space: if the ingredients were formatted as a list with a newline between each item, then the text would have to be smaller, which would probably make it harder to read overall.

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