From the Behance network comes this nice-looking typography showcase site. Visit site »
Jon has a good piece on @font-face, and specifically how to make it work in both IE and other browsers. Great stuff. Visit site »
sIFR-alike, written in JavaScript using canvas. Looks pretty nice at a glance, if not as developed as sIFR. It's certainly unfortunate that we still have to use these kind of hacks, but as long as we do, I'll keep noting them here. Visit site »
No surprises, here, but it’s a nice list. Visit site »
Wilson’s great a thought-provoking piece on text size on the web, where he suggests that a 16px base size online is more or less equivalent to a 11pt size in print. He’s got some good evidence to back it up, and the discussion that follows is pretty interesting. Visit site »
The great folks at Web Directions have posted the slides and audio from my recent typography talk in Sydney. Enjoy! Visit site »
John Allsopp has some really great thoughts on the trickier issues around embedding fonts in web pages. As you probably know, the real isn’t isn’t the technology, but rather the legalities and licensing. The reality is that font embedding is here (it’s supposed now by a few of the cutting edge browsers), and font foundries are just going to have to deal with it. There are several ways they can make money off it, if they’ll just get a little creative with their business model. Visit site »
Dave chimes in on a topic that is very relevant to me lately. He says:
I wonder whether designing around scaling text is still a skill we need to hold on to, and for how long.
I also wondered aloud whether we still need to be using relative unit for type in my typography talk in Sydney a couple weeks ago, and the Twitter haters came out of the woodwork to say that I didn’t care about accessibility and and I was “not thinking about about my fellow man.” It’ll be interesting to see how they react when Dave wonders the same thing. Visit site »
For those of you who think Shepard Fairey is a rip-off artist and consumerist whore, here’s hoping the great David Carson sits a little better with you. Visit site »
Some great typesetting rules here. Most of them don’t really apply to the web (that is to say, they should, but we simply don’t have the control to allow for them), but there are a few that do. I was particularly excited by the rules for emoticons, which I’ve always wondered about. I’d created this rule for myself; I’m glad to see someone else agrees:
A smiley may coincide with a closing bracket (given that it is preceded by an opening one :-).
(Note to Sara Flemming: your ass-backwards open-paren-colon smileys destroy all meaning these rules may have had (:). See!?
Via Dan Mall. Visit site »
The difference between “typeface” and “font” is one of those things where you know it doesn’t really matter when people use them interchangeably, but when you know the difference, it still grates on your nerves to hear them used incorrectly. By the way, if I haven’t said it before: Jon Tan’s site has some of the best web typography around. Check it out. Visit site »
An absolutely gorgeous design by Bryan here. Great typography, great simplicity in the colors. I love it all. Also, how about that product name? Addicitionary, for a social dictionary? Perfect. I read it three different ways: “A dictionary,” “Add dictionary,” and “Addicition-ary” (which I assume is the way it’s pronounced). Clever.
Also, see Bryan’s retrospective on the design. Visit site »
Probably nothing you don’t already know here, but they’re good reminders, nonetheless. Visit site »
Looks interesting at a glance. I haven’t checked out the code, so I’m not sure. If you’re needing non-web fonts in sucky browsers, it may be worth looking into. Visit site »
Richard puts out a call to font foundries to stop fretting about web font embedding and find a way to make it work in their favor. Noting that by the end of the year, around 30% of web users will be able to view embedded typefaces, Richard says:
Font foundries could license their fonts for embedding and serve those fonts only to registered websites, using their own hosted system or via a trusted third party.
Word. Visit site »
Firefox 3 gets big kudos for its incorporation of kerning and basic ligatures in the new version of the browser. However, these improvements are negated by the fact that it also enables discretionary ligatures by default, which is likely to destroy the look of pages rendered in certain typefaces. Visit site »
Chad’s got a nice post showcasing several great examples of web typography. His selections are definitely good, but it’s worth pointing out that they’re almost exclusively examples of great display type on the web. Very little body type is showcased here. Visit site »
Jon has a nice piece on the paragraph and how to appropriately use it on the web. It’s an important topic and one I spend a decent amount of time on in my usual typography talk when I speak at events. Far too often, people think typography is all about picking typefaces; Jon effectively explains some of the more nuanced details in this article. Visit site »