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Comment by dchest | Hacker News Reader

Don't want to sound rude, but the lens ("I made this") has pretty bad type work. Kerning is off, the curve is not right (http://i.imgur.com/tpDqv.png). The drop shadow is also strange. Overall, there's not enough attention to detail.

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I’m disappointed by her use of straight apostrophes (') in contractions and straight quotes ("") around quotations. Using typographic apostrophes, typographic quotation marks, and em dashes in the right places makes all the difference, especially in headlines.

Nowadays, web designers have so many typographic tools to work with, like @font-face and lettering.js, but basic punctuation and formatting don’t get enough love.

It’s an oldie, but I think everyone working with web type should read Robin Williams’ The Mac is not a typewriter [0]. It’s just as relevant to modern web type as it was to early desktop publishing.

[0] http://www.amazon.com/Mac-not-typewriter-Robin-Williams/dp/0...

As a technically lay person who does care about this, what are some tools that I can use to write web copy with typographically correct apostrophes and quotes (or convert it afterwards)? Am I supposed to use the html code or special key combination every time?

If you're on the Mac:

    “ = Alt-[
    ” = Alt-Shift-[
    « = Alt-\
    » = Alt-Shift-\
    ‘ = Alt-]
    ’ = Alt-Shift-]
    — = Alt--

For other operating systems there are typographic layouts, such as http://ilyabirman.ru/english/typography-layout/

There are libraries that can do the conversion, such as SmartyPants: http://daringfireball.net/projects/smartypants/

In HTML, it's pretty easy to remember a few typographic characters that you'll need, see http://www.degraeve.com/reference/specialcharacters.php

Thanks for those suggestions. So, then, do you (or others) actually use those key combinations instead of ' and " while writing/typing? That seems like a fairly heavy re-working of a very low level muscle-memory process that would take me a long time to habit-change.

I don't use any of the software that Smartypants supports, but I just started playing with Pandoc http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/ yesterday, and it has a --smart flag, so that's probably what I'll go with.

As I also recently started trying to learn vim (it's hard), I might try this: http://www.oreillynet.com/xml/blog/2005/10/smart_quotes_and_... too.

In case anyone else is in a similar position.

For my blogs, etc. I just process everything via Textile/SmartyPants/similar.

For other writing, I don't bother to insert proper quote marks, but usually use a proper dash.

BTW, Mac OS X since 10.6 can automatically replace quotes in any Cocoa textview, but I have it turned off.

The problem with "smart typography" is that is must be language-aware: quotes used in «Russian» are different from “English” and „German“ and »other« »styles»: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-English_usage_of_quotation_...

  As a technically lay person who does care about this, 
  what are some tools that I can use to write web copy 
  with typographically correct apostrophes and quotes

I use Textpattern CMS, which has built-in support for Textile (they were built by the same developer.) Textile converts marked-up text input to valid, well-formed XHTML and also inserts character entity references for apostrophes, opening and closing single and double quotation marks, ellipses and em dashes.

http://textpattern.com/

I was also confused by it. I was wondering if she worked for Leica at some point (i.e., she designed a camera lens?). Only by reading your critique can I guess that she drew it. It looks pretty good, although the kerning problems with the text is a little distracting.

I think you are missing the point and holding her to a standard you cannot meet yourself.

Of course, I can't, but I'm not a designer, unlike her.

I didn't notice this at first glance but I definitely see it and agree now that you mention it. Not only is the type off but when I look very carefully at the lens the overall construction feels off-balance to me. It feels like the lens is being looked at slightly off center, e.g. the individual lens elements (circles) are off center.

All that said, I still think this is a totally awesome site and I hope she gets the job!

Now you've made me curious: what's wrong with the curve? And couldn't the font accurately represent Leica's actual font?

Here’s an image of the actual lens, from the same angle: http://a.img-dpreview.com/news/0602/panasonic/leica14-50mm-0...

If you look at the copy, the label text is set around a much wider circle than it should be. Also, the characters are relatively larger, a lot wider, with smaller letter spacing, than the original.

Here's the approximate path of text: http://i.imgur.com/Usrgf.png

compare: http://i.imgur.com/uD9nT.png (thanks, Samuel_Michon)

The font is okay, but kerning is not good -- you can clearly see it in "VARIO" (IO), and E72 (7).

I would never want to work with someone as negative as you.

Some people don't enjoy working in pseudo-positive and falsely encouraging environments that give second-rate work an undeserved pass. There's something motivating about standards and demands.

The problem is too many people, much like about half the people commenting here, confuse that with being an insufferable prick.

I'm not sure I understand: are employers supposed to be positive and not critical when hiring people?

It's a designer showing her work to a potential employer. I made a comment that her work is not yet good enough, there are certainly areas which she can improve.

As for your ad hominem: I'm not actually a negative person.

The critique might have been harsh, but it was also constructive. It's not like he came out and called her work crap. He gave useful feedback on the design.

He's not being negative he is critiquing a designer's work on the merit of that work. These are facts.

He prefaces it by saying that there is no offence intended. Even if it may come across as negative, it's clearly in the best interest based on the preface.

Curious, can you point me to your sites design?

Why do you want to look at my site? Will this somehow make my points invalid? :-) Oh, this guy can't design, so no, kerning is right.

I'm not a designer, and although I design everything for my products myself, I don't pretend that my design work is good; hell, I know that I lack attention to detail, and I'll be the first person to criticize my work.

If you insist, here you go: http://www.codingrobots.com/ (the most recent thing I drew was this, I think: http://www.codingrobots.com/images/cathodique_128.png [this reminded me that this product is dead, and I need to release this icon into the public domain], and I can point out why it's not good, and why it's the best I can do at this moment).

BTW, I'm not looking for a job.

Edit: while the spotlight is on my, I'd like to say that design is a very fricking hard work. Every time I try to draw an icon or position elements on a web page, it's like going to hell -- it takes forever and causes pains. Programming is easier ;-)

Why do you want to look at my site? Will this somehow make my points invalid? :-) Oh, this guy can't design, so no, kerning is right.

No, it doesn't make it any more invalid. BUT I looked a the lens and didn't see a problem with it, and overall thought the design seemed pretty good. With your critique I was hoping to see what someone with a very sharp eye for design would actually put in production.

Thanks for explaining. It's sure easier to criticize than to create.

I don't really think the critique of the lens was valid. I don't see the point, "lack of detail?" Maybe it wasn't meant to have detail in the first place? It's like if I would say that "You only used bewels in PS" for your little "drawing", I mean it's sort of pointless.

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