“Cure for the Common Font” — A Web Designer’s Introduction to Typeface Selection
Posted in: presentations, sxsw, typeface selectionLast week, I joined Frank Chimero, Tiffany Wardle, and Jason Santa Maria for a panel at the SXSW conference.
Now that web designers suddenly face the challenge (and delight) of choosing fonts from an ever-growing selection, we thought it’s a good time to recommend some basic principles for making wise type choices.
The slides from each of our four quick presentations are below, as well as audio generously provided by SXSW. If you’re short on time and feel like you know the fundamentals, skip ahead to the second half of the session — I think the Q&A is as useful as our prepared stuff.
Of course, an hour is hardly enough time to deliver what one can get from the first day in a good Type 1 course, and as I listen to the audio I cringe at all the crap I missed or said poorly, but I think we did a decent job of introducing some concepts that will launch young designers more confidently into the new typographic web.
If you attended the panel and have any questions that you didn’t get answered or simply need help finding the right font, feel free to contact me here or on Twitter: @typographica or @font_id.
Slides
Audio
Or view the slides at full screen to autoplay the audio.
Resources
Related Links
- Typedia: Type News, Webfont Alternatives
- Practical Examples: Typekit, Fonts in Use
- Helvetica in U.S. Retail
- Frutiger in Airports, Heathrow
- Hoefler & Frere-Jones webfonts?
- Hinting: Peter Biľak, Tim Ahrens, Microsoft, Beat Stamm
- Test webfonts before you buy
- Serving Typekit font weights and styles to Internet Explorer
- Readability
- Recommended typefaces here at Typographica
- FontFonter
- Combining typefaces: four techniques from H&FJ, with Helvetica, sans/serif
- Kerning, the game
- WebFont Loader (announcement)
- Font vs. Typeface
- Font identification resources
- Type Camp!
Recommended Books
- “The Elements of Typographic Style” (Bringhurst), Applied to the Web
- “Thinking With Type” (Lupton)
- “Detail in Typography” (Hochuli)
- “Stop Stealing Sheep” (Spiekermann, Ginger)
- more
Webfont Providers
- Typotheque
- Typekit
- Webtype
- A comparison of Typekit and Webtype
- FontShop
- Fontdeck
- Fontspring
- MyFonts
- Fonts.com Web Fonts
- Google Web Fonts (free)
- Font Squirrel (free)
Typefaces Used and Mentioned
- FF Meta Serif (Typekit)
- FF Tisa (Typekit)
- National
- Trade Gothic
- DIN Next Rounded (alt: FF DIN Round)
- Adobe Garamond (Typekit)
- Skolar (Skolar)
- Proxima Nova (Typekit)
- Chaparral (Typekit)
- Hellenic Wide (Typekit)
- Georgia
- Lucida Sans/Grande
- Titling Gothic
- League Gothic (Typekit)
- Founders Grotesk
- CamingDos (Typekit
- Bauer Bodoni
- Myriad (Typekit)
- Bello (Typekit)
- Le Monde Journal (Typekit)
- Facit
- Mrs Eaves
- Verdana
- FF Milo Serif
- Futura (alternatives)
- Times New Roman (alternatives)
- Gill Sans (alternatives)
- Trade Gothic (alternatives)
- Helvetica (alternatives)
- Museo Sans (Typekit)
- Benton Modern RE
- Minion (Typekit)
- Frutiger
Our Favorite Typefaces of the Moment
- Tiffany: Founders Grotesk, Tiempos
- Jason: Chaparral, Titling Gothic
- Frank: National, Minion
- Stephen: anything from Commercial Type
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