Barlow font...

[tlambert03]

This is of course just a subjective opinion, but I find the barlow font being used on napari.org to be less legible, and less attractive than the generic system-ui font-family stack used in the standard pydata sphinx theme. Curious whether others feel like it's an improvement? @DragaDoncila, @jni, @sofroniewn?

[codemonkey800]

We can always change the font for the docs specifically and keep Barlow for the theme default cc: @liaprins-czi

[jni]

@codemonkey800

change the font for the docs specifically and keep Barlow for the theme default

What does this mean exactly? imho the point of the theme is that we use it "as-is". So this issue is by my reading more about changing the theme than about our docs specifically.

I find the barlow font being used on napari.org to be less legible,

I feel the same way. Attractiveness is definitely subjective and I can see the appeal of Barlow — it is at the very least distinctive — but legibility is not subjective. Unfortunately, I've never had an easy time finding actual legibility metrics for specific fonts, but I'd wager Barlow wouldn't score highly there. If my eyes don't deceive me, Barlow is more condensed than most fonts, which is probably not great for legibility. (?)

Perhaps a way to maintain the personality of the theme while improving legibility is to use Barlow for headings but a more standard sans font for body text?

[alisterburt]

generic system ui (pydata default):
edit: light mode for @jni 😆

Barlow (current napari.org theme):

I prefer Barlow overall but this is definitely on an aesthetic level, not a legibility level. I don't have a problem reading either but can see how the pydata defaults would be more legible - ultimately I'm happy with either

[jni]

@alisterburt why is the PyData screenshot in dark mode 😂

[alisterburt]

updated with light mode - pydata respects system theme but napari.org theme doesn't it seems!

[jni]

Not yet, it's an issue: #22

[alisterburt]

got another outside perspective - pydata is 'cleaner' and 'prettier'. From this (small) sample it's already clear that it's subjective which is nicer. Legibility seems clearly better on the pydata theme, that seems important enough to change it 🙂

Perhaps a way to maintain the personality of the theme while improving legibility is to use Barlow for headings but a more standard sans font for body text?

👍🏼 this sounds great

[jni]

To clarify: I like a lot of aspects of our theme, and to me PyData is very "beige", and I dislike it for that reason. But I don't think the main text font is an improvement because I find it more noticeable (=distracting) and less easy to read.

[alisterburt]

To be clear comments above were only in relation to the fonts in the two screenshots above - I love the napari theme :)

[sofroniewn]

I think there's call out here that readability on the .org might not be as good as we'd like it to be right now, but I'm not sure the issue is the just legibility of the Barlow font, which in my subjective opinion I find quite attractive.

I (and I wonder if others feel the same) probably find https://www.napari-hub.org/ slightly more readable than https://napari.org/. There are some differences here in font size and column width (maybe line height?) that could contribute to readability.

I know that in the first pass of the website things might not have been implemented to be pixel-perfect design-wise as we wanted to just start with PyData and get something quick that would work.

Maybe @liaprins-czi can take a closer look at the .org and the original designs and work with @codemonkey800 to make some readability improvements while keeping Barlow. If we can't get to a place which people find readable enough with Barlow then maybe @liaprins-czi could propose another font.

[liaprins-czi]

Maybe @liaprins-czi can take a closer look at the .org and the original designs and work with @codemonkey800 to make some readability improvements while keeping Barlow. If we can't get to a place which people find readable enough with Barlow then maybe @liaprins-czi could propose another font.

This sounds good to me. It is true that we were just trying to get out the first round of primary iterations for the theme, and there are smaller fixes left. We will see how we can make it better first, maybe including letter-spacing as well as the line-height, text length, and other attributes. Otherwise, I agree with the idea of keeping it for the display face (headings, etc) and finding a complimentary font for the main text.

It is interesting to me that others find Barlow to be less legible than the PyData default, but good to know. I do think legibility is subjective because there haven't been reproducible studies I've found (and also I happen to to find the PyData default less legible slightly, maybe because I peruse fonts regularly for my job as a designer and used to looking at all different ones, but that's just a guess! Also it looks more harsh to my eyes so maybe that affects my perception, too, who knows.)

(And just in case anyone is interested in more about how I chose Barlow, it was based on some principles I was working with when I made the initial napari.org redesign a while ago (before this Sphinx-themification). It felt like Barlow was fitting the concepts of being friendly and welcoming because it has round elements to most letters, even the dot for the "i", but the roundness is more geometric and precise. It also felt very clean and cohesive the way most of the letters had parallel vertical lines (e.g. the lowercase "e", "c", and "o" aren't perfectly round, but are more vertical / straight at their middles before rounding at top and bottom, if that makes sense . Lastly, it is slightly less generic than some other fonts, which made it seem more recognizable as an element specific to napari that others could subconsciously recognize and even tie across napari.org and the hub. If that all sounded very subjective to you, yes it is by definition, but there is a bit of rationale. And user don't consciously notice any of that (unless they are font designers lol), but subconsciously can affect how they "feel" about a site. However, legibility is extremely important, so again, if needed we can certainly find a complimentary font and keep Barlow for the more "branded" areas like headers!)

[jni]

Thank you for your comment, Lia! I agree with everything you said. In terms of legibility, my thought is that this:

It also felt very clean and cohesive the way most of the letters had parallel vertical lines (e.g. the lowercase "e", "c", and "o" aren't perfectly round, but are more vertical / straight at their middles before rounding at top and bottom, if that makes sense)

encapsulates what I find less legible (and what I called more "condensed" above, though that might have been abusing terminology 😅). Although your point about the cohesion of the font makes sense, in my opinion, the extra vertical strokes make the letters less distinguishable from other letters with vertical strokes such as m, n, u.

Anyway, glad to have you confirm that it's hard to find legibility studies. I'm of half a mind to go do one so we can put the issue to rest! 😂

[tlambert03]

so, what's the general feeling on this? Sounds like @jni and I find Barlow – while perhaps "distinctive" – to be less legible/attractive. @sofroniewn, @alisterburt, and @liaprins-czi like it.

I would kinda like to have some action on this either way: that is, give up hoping that it might change :) or put together some alternative renderings and get a consensus from @napari/core-devs and contractors.