Design RSS

I posted before that this blog is still not that pretty. Mainly because I was trying to not fiddle with the design too much, as it’s a time sink hole for me.#

Well today I did actually tidy up the looks slightly. Nothing crazy. Just a bit more padding here. A changed font size there.#

But the biggest change is a custom font. I was using Georgia and Helvetica11 Or Arial on Windows. before. And I really wanted to avoid custom fonts simply because it slows down the site as the fonts have to be downloaded. But I just love typography too much.#

I’m using Heliotrope. I kind of forgot I had a licence for it to be honest, until I happily found it in my /fonts folder on my Mac.#

As the description of it says, it’s “nei­ther sans nor serif”. It’s a very interesting font. I often struggle to choose between serif and sans-serif fonts. I love the beauty of the former. But struggle to resist the cleanness of the later. Heliotrope is a great middle ground.#

Here’s the blog on an iPhone 15:#

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But I have to say, I think the blog looks at its best in dark mode:#

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Last year I finally got a 4K monitor. I still have two 13-year-old 27" Apple Thunderbolt displays to the left and right. But my main monitor is a 32" Samsung 4K monitor11 SAMSUNG ViewFinity S7 LS32D700EAUXXU 4K Ultra HD 32" VA LED Monitor - Black. So when I'm building/designing things like this blog I'm looking at a 4K monitor. And the first thing I realised when I started using 4K is just how tiny things like text look. But plenty of people are still on HD monitors. So it's always a bit of a shock how big this blog looks when I view it on my office’s HD monitor. It's tough – what do you design for? The new (4K)? Or the old (HD)?#

I like using a Mac because it's largely beautiful (less so these days, I admit).#

But I have to use Windows for work. And my goodness every day I am shocked by its ugliness.#

Even with the rise of everything being browser based (thus things look largely the same on Mac and Windows) it's still an issue.#

Windows is a bit like religion – I don't understand how people can choose it.#