This month, I presented "Typography for the Web" at the NY Web Standards Meetup. Right now, typography on the web has been receiving lots of attention from both designers and developers alike—designers wanting to know what their constraints are and developers wanting to know the best practices for implementing advanced typography. I covered a wide range of topics so that people can continue to research and learn about this rapidly-changing field.
Slides, photos, video and audio from "Typography for the Web"
What are some of your favorite typography resources? How do you feel about one type of replacement technique over another? Please continue the conversation in the comments below
Whew! It’s been quite a time at South By Southwest Interactive–lots of panels, parties, and good eating! Since there are a multitude of people who have taken amazing notes during the panels and core conversations, I’ll spare you those details, but just as important as what’s said during the panels is what you can take away from it! Here is a list of the “take-aways:” the twitter usernames, the Web sites and the books. Here are some ideas and resources you can use right away!
Overarching Themes:
Collaboration within companies, collaboration between client & web team, collaboration between web teams
Openness with coworkers and with clients
Don’t do work for the sake of doing work; create deliverables that have applicable value
Some clients (and even workers) respond better to many lo-fidelity steps (sketching, collage, mood boards) to buy into the design process before seeing a polished design
Agile development! Working in quick phases to roll out a product. Everyone’s talking about it, but it may not be good for every team or every client
Web Typography: Quit Bitchin’ and Get Your Glyph On
Ditch the concept of the “singular genius designer.” The designer is the person who takes everyone’s ideas and creates a cohesive solution to the problem
Always sketch out at least six layout ideas!
Get as many people (developers, clients, shareholders) involved as early as possible
A good fit is achieved by every team member having the same core values
Always remain passionate about what you’re doing. Even if you find yourself in a situation you don’t like, find a small thing to focus on and remain passionate
Show your clients a variety of mood board concepts; This is the stage for back-and-forth conversations and for feedback. Take this knowledge and deliver one cohesive design mock-up. Delivering several designs diminishes your expertise in finding the right solution.
Educate your clients on the value of your product; don’t work to meet unreasonable deadlines
Don’t let a single designer get too involved in the “ownership” of his/her design. Take it away and let someone else work on it.
Don’t design behind closed doors, open up the conversation!
In pursuit of finding some free fonts to load onto the new iMac, I stumbled across The Rather Difficult Font Game, which proved not to be toooo difficult, but there were some challenging ones in there. If you think you know your typefaces and are in need of some validation that you’re as awesome as you think you are, give it a go!
After being slightly bitter about my score of 29/34, I decided to search through the rest of the I Love Typography website, and it really has a lot to offer. The blog posts are thorough, and they’ve compiled a significant amount of typography resources that are worth checking out. But for now, I’m going to go study some fonts so I can get my score into the Hall of Fame!
