Web Design Typography
Wow, what a day! A friend just spilled water on my laptop! It seems to be fried but hopefully it will turn back on after I let it dry out overnight, seeing as how all of my homework for the last two weeks is saved on it. I am rushing to try to remake my homepage, put it likely will look somewhat different than the original. Well enough of my ranting, let’s talk a little bit about typography.
The first web information I started to read was actually a chapter on typography in an ebook called Web Style Guide. This entire book seemed to have a lot of good information so hopefully I will have a chance to read the remainder of it as well. Even though it is a little bit old (2002) it had quite a bit of good information about typography in web design. It covers, section-by-section, all of the major typographical variations, including: white space, type size, type face, alignment, line length, emphasis, etc. I highly suggest anyone who has the time reads chapter 5 in this ebook.
Next I read an article called The Anatomy of Web Fonts which deals more with font type and coloring. They discuss what features of a letterform make it a good display font for web and give a few simple rules so that you can pick a font that works well and is easily legible. One other issue brought up in this article is aliased vs. anti-aliased text and the changes it may have on your design.
The third article that I found really informative was on WPDFD called, oddly enough, typography. This article is pretty lengthy but covers a lot of information about the use of type in web design. Seeing as it is 11:58 I really don’t have any more time to cover the particulars of the article so just read it for yourself!
I’m also going to post a link to this reference page that contains a ton of links to articles and sites about web typography.
Mary Ann said,
February 19, 2009 at 1:28 pm
I learned something about color on the Anatomy of design site. Can I assume that if you create a type in Photoshop or Ilistrator that you inport into a website is also effected by the browsers?
Sorry to hear about your computer. I know what that is like.
airimpact said,
February 19, 2009 at 9:49 pm
That must suck about your laptop…
With all the information out there on design and typography for websites I wish I could take this class for an entire day instead of 4 hours. There is a lot more we need to look at when selecting fonts and not only do they look cool, I use to think that if a font face looked good then it must work, but it turns out that it doesn’t always.
slschweppe said,
February 19, 2009 at 10:55 pm
Wow I think I would freak out if someone got water on my laptop. Good luck with all of that.
I think I will look in to reading that book that you recommended. Thanks for the information.
rmspencer said,
February 23, 2009 at 9:33 pm
i like the anatomy link, very interesting to see that the web design industry is going to change right from under us soon. cant wait