Hoefler & Frere Jones always have something interesting to say. Their recent article On the Death and 441-Year Life of the Pixel waves goodbye to the pixel as monitors using utterly unpronounceable acronyms for their technologies achieve higher and higher resolutions. One of the obvious benefits is we should expect to see a vast improvement in on-screen typography as we’re no longer having to hint at the subtleties of type as if seen through the compound eyes of an insect. We can also look forward to laughing at outdated websites designed for 640×480 monitors sitting in the corner of our screens like letters to Lilliput. The downside is of course no longer being able to take a preview image from ghetty, crop off the watermark and still have a sizable hero image for the homepage, ahem.
In general design is always about overcoming challenges and in web design the challenge has always been how to convey all the information you’d find in a magazine, brochure or catalogue but on something the size of a postage stamp or business card at best. Soon that problem will go away for good and web designers will be faced with the rather more frightening challenge of learning how properly to use all that extra space. Web designers now have a lot to learn from print designers.
I do wish H&FJ had wheeled out those old embroidery patterns a bit sooner.