One (perhaps the only?) positive development on the Web since the glory days is that the "normal" size of text on the average website has gone up from minuscule to legible or even a little bigger than it needs to be.
That's not to say there weren't websites with big text in 2004, or websites with small text today. But our visual language for "this is what a website looks like" has evolved. What it means for a website to look "designed" vs "normal" (for lack of better terms) has changed.
Even pages intentionally aiming for an "undesigned" or brutalist feel tack towards larger, rather than smaller, text.
bloomberg.com/features/compa…
bloomberg.com/features/compa…
It's probably unfair to give aesthetic decisions by pro designers all the credit. The sub-4" screen sizes of early smartphones played a huge part in driving the change: if you want users to read it, it can't be small.
But I suspect that the biggest factor is simply that the Web stopped being a "foreign" space with a mainstream aesthetic culture separate from what you'd find in a magazine or a poster and became one of many channels in communication strategies. The message overtook the medium.
The other interesting factor is the rise of alternatives to longform text: microblogging, audio, Stories, and alternative virtual spaces.
When the only text on the page is 2 punchy sentences to get people over to your Twitch stream of Among Us, might as well make the text big.
When the only text on the page is 2 punchy sentences to get people over to your Twitch stream of Among Us, might as well make the text big.
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