Mar 20

“Cure for the Common Font” — A Web Designer’s Introduction to Typeface Selection

Posted in: presentations, sxsw, typeface selection

Last 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

Recommended Books

Webfont Providers

Typefaces Used and Mentioned

Our Favorite Typefaces of the Moment


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