Perhaps HN needs a place for meta comments like this. I hated the ridiculously poor contrast and tiny fonts, especially since the site was created by people who do know better.
2e2e2e and 787878 is a contrast 3.07:1, which is pretty lousy.
It is weird that they can create a nice little logo-thing, and yet have a website that's unusable for many people.
I used to think that a designer's website would be some indicator of their talent, but there's not much correlation there.
Regarding your thought, there's an aspect of design known as typography that directly deals with easing and encouraging reading. So I'm inclined to say no -- this is not a common designer anti-pattern -- and to say it is implies the ideal of the design profession lies with the least capable of its practitioners.
That's insincere.
May we please demonstrate respect and professionalism when discussing designers?
Making unsupported assertions about a perceived defect in an entire profession doesn't seem right to me, but I was very tempted to just write, "'Look at those dumb designers' seems to be a common developer anti-pattern." I don't think that sort of comment is necessary.
People with different backgrounds focus on different things. Some designers will be do fabulous things on an aspect of typography (turning a K into a currency sign) and yet make an error with type contrast that impedes reading.
One could infer from that is they don't think what they wrote was as important as the picture, since they rather intentionally selected a poor contrast design.
All professions have anti-patterns and all people make errors. Mine was being a little flip in my tone to show a recurring problem I experience. Yours was generalizing that criticism of a designer's error is a criticism of the entire profession.
I've tried to design things. They are ugly and clunky and clearly the result of someone with no skill or talent.
So when I see a designer with some years of experience and training and who is capable of producing lovely work but who has a website with a very small font, or with a poor contrast, or with the combination of a small font with poor contrast, I wonder "what went wrong?"
FWIW, I found reading the story quite pleasant. It never even occurred to me that there was any problem with the site until I saw all the complaints in the HN comments.
In retrospect I can of course see the low contrast, but it didn't seem to be a problem in practice.
It also worked pretty well to emphasize the pictures, which really are the main point...
I think that's because the brightness on your monitor is very high. I keep the brightness knocked down since most sites use a lot of white, and I don't like reading off lightbulbs. This blog actually looks nice when I crank the brightness up, but then a site like HN (which is a typical website) looks terrible.
On a page with barely any contrast between the text and background.