What is with tiny text?

[auronlu]

I see that as a design element it occasionally adds zing to icons. I am not sure why. I also have a vague feeling that the emperor has no clothes. Tiny text delivers no content and merely serves as another kind of texture, so why is it so "cool", so popular? I wonder if it is really delivering some sort of subliminal message that the aliens are coming to destroy the earth and we must all bow down and worship the Vorlon god Boojie. What gives?

Comments

[heyheyrenay.livejournal.com]

Um. Because it's meant as a a texture? That's always been its point, I thought, since all of the text brushes I have I can't read, but some of them are really neat-looking; people who can make those types of brushes work for their icons usually end up with stunning icons (in my opinion). Of course, I'm not really an icon maker, so not sure what my opinion is worth, there.

It's like anything else that icon makers use—why do they use half the things they do? Why brushes? Why gradients? Why animation? Why the hundreds of other trends? Of course, most of the brushes I have came with text files sharing the sources of the text, so many I'm spoiled.