fluid web typography (a guide)
That’s the name of the book I found waiting for me at my desk, on my return to the office yesterday morning. The timing of it was perfect since having gotten up and commuted in the snow, after 26 days away from the office, I was seriously starting to get the post-holiday blues. This belated present by Mr Jason Cranford Teague, or @jasonspeaking for the twitteristas of you out there, more then cheered me up.
Some of you might know that I am currently reworking this site.You might have noticed from this skin and the ones in the past, that I like me a pretty font as much as anyone :P Over the years I have, at different times, tried out sIFR (twice), normal CSS font stacks and now cufon to override conventional typography. I have explored a variety of techniques on this blog, mostly as a test space of stuff before I take them to “production”.
I was very excited to see that the book is really up-to-date! I was quite surprised, but in a good way. At about 170 pages without the appendixes & indexes, I managed to read most of it while I was downloading and sorting through the 12009 emails I received at work over the holidays and then continued reading later that evening and this afternoon.
The “guide” in the title is absolutely justified. Over 6 chapters, it covers everything from “what is a font” to “building a fluid font stack”. It’s written in a language that the geek in me understood but the bibliophile in me enjoyed, always a plus. Full of examples and resources that most of us have visited probably more than once, it’s very down to earth and not just stuffed with images or just boring text. Well balanced as a composition and with some stuff that I have already bookmarked.
“Cross-OS web safe fonts” is a very cool reference page for when you want to stick to CSS but still feel the need to shake your (font) stack, especially on a print style. You can view all the available fonts printed out, which is rather helpful, at least for me who suffers typographically. The web specimen font book is very good as a resource too.
I think it’s well suited for people like me who are just starting to understand typography but feel more comfortable with the geeky side of embedding fonts, as well as for the die hard typophile, who would like to have the knowledge on how to display beautiful fontage (sic). Although everything that’s covered in the book you can find on the internet, it’s rather handy to have all the different sites, techniques, resources & references at hand, saves hours of searching especially if you are starting out. I think I am going to take the time to read it again properly especially since I am currently working away to a new me. Well, new acidsmile. Maybe?
On that note, I’m more than happy to say that this site is featured in fluid web typography More than happy in fact, because you can see both site skins in the screenshots. And my full name printed correctly which is a rarity!
This makes it a little bit easier to leave these themes behind, if in the end I go with my instinct and completely overhaul this site. I’m glad that at least one person on this planet apart from the people that love me think that this site looks good.
Big thanks to Jason.
Comments
Well done Miss T!!!! I’m very jealous!
Thank you Spam :)