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jslabovitz | 3 months ago

I've used Averia (Serif Libre, specifically) for at least a decade as my primary font for email, web pages in 'reader' mode, writing long-form text, etc. I find it extremely legible, and even calming.

Ironically, I've been a typographer for decades, both for print and online. Averia might seem an odd choice for someone intimately familiar with typographic theory/history and the vast catalog of possible fonts. But there's a certain pleasure and comfort in a font that is not trying to stand out or do anything particularly special.

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bitwize|3 months ago

It's kind of like how if you take the average of enough male or female human faces, the result is a very pleasing, attractive face.

abound|3 months ago

Same with music, a large group of people singing slightly off-key (each in their own way) tends to sound pretty good in aggregate

toledocavani|3 months ago

That's interesting, because my intuition of an "average" face is, well, average and uninteresting. Can you share your source?

zeroq|3 months ago

The main reason it has this "calming" feature is because it's imperfect. By averaging different, sometimes incompatible font faces the result looks like a letter pressed on a soft paper, with all it's natural imperfections. It looks real.

Somehow I was not aware of Averia and used Old Timey for exact same reasons in the past.

On the other hand, someone here mentioned "Lato", which to me looks exactly how two robots would write holiday postcards to each other.