Yes, I thought you would probably take some offense at it (which you clearly did), which is why I said "I mean it in the least offensive way possible". I have nothing against you personally, and frankly I'm sure you are a wonderful person. I just strongly disagreed with your critiques in this particular subject.

As a response, I'll say this: you're right about design being subjective. This is something I tend to consider common knowledge, and when one says that a design (or anything subjective, like a song) is 'better' or 'worse', you must assume this means that the majority of people would judge it as such. I can promise you that things are popular for a reason, whether you personally think so or not.

However, this 'majority rule' is not the singular and sole influence - often times experts or tastemakers can influence how 'good' something is perceived to be. Great examples of this are modern art and wine -- the overwhelming majority of people do not have sophisticated taste in these two areas, so they often allow themselves to be guided by experts who have dedicated a lot of time and study to the area. And this makes sense, no?

So let's think about how you can figure out if you have good taste or not in an area. If you find that your taste often aligns with both those who have experience and training, and the majority of normal people, whether or not you have expertise yourself, it's likely that your taste in this area is good. On the other hand, if you find it to be quite the opposite, it's likely that your taste isn't so good. Again, it doesn't matter here whether you an expert or not, although the more expertise you have, the more likely it is that your taste will 'improve'. If the masses and experts are at odds, although this doesn't happen super often, I'd be more likely to side with those with training, but that's just a personal opinion.

This is nothing really to take too personally. I find that I have terrible taste in movies, for example. Most movies that critics like and that are popular with my friends and the masses, I really don't like very much. And that's fine, I just accept it, move on, and know that I'm not going to be writing movie critiques any time soon, since I don't have good taste in movies. I don't write poor quality movie reviews anyway, then rage on anyone who tells me that my taste in movies isn't so good. That's some American Idol shit right there.

There's no arrogance or elitism here, it's self-awareness. I made this comment about you rather than the contents of the comment because the the comment you wrote is about you, not the contents of your comment. It's about this -- what we're talking about: subjective critiques, how valid they are, and how they can be backed up. You are arguing against both (many) trained designers and heavily up-voted items -- don't you think that means anything?

I would like to truly apologize for the extent that I offended you with this comment though, I really honestly didn't mean for it to go over quite so poorly as it did. You don't seem to draw any difference between the two, but intentions and results are different things, really. And my intention was (and still is) not to incite anger, just to discuss.

Also, I agree that the type on roots needs a little bit more contrast, other people (both designers and non-designers) have mentioned this as well. I'll be making that change soon : )