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

[muggy-mountain.livejournal.com]

*Starts rambling about post-constructivist design before thinking better of it.*

Yes, they annoy me, too. I feel like I'm missing a piece when I can't read the text. But really? It probably is so popular because they reflect the designs we see in current magazine advertisements and such. They attempt to achieve the same visual balance in a tiny fraction of the space.