25 March 2010

Fonts

So, now I'm starting to get the hang of the whole site build thing, I'm starting to want to do more with the style and design.

I know when it comes to web pages, I've been able to safely use a short list of fonts (Georgia, Verdana, Lucida, Arial, TNR), but if I wanted to create something more interesting looking, I've resorted to whipping up an image in Photoshop and inserting it in - which does no favours for me in terms of SEO or accessibility.

I came across an article via Smashing mag re Typekit, which opened my eyes somewhat to embedding typefaces - more of which was clarified by this article on Web fonts and standards and @font-face, which also had a handy link to the Tan method (clean 'hack') to make it work with IE, as well as a handy source of fonts available for @font-face embedding (free!).

Definitely an area to explore post LIF2...

I also learned a bit re fonts by reading this very useful (free!) Type classification handbook (and finally found out what san serif means :-/ I can't believe I never bothered to check before). It explained the 10 kinds of type classifications and gave examples of each. A handy way to increase my design vocabulary and gain some appreciation for the history and evolution of the different styles.

1 comment:

  1. Speaking of fonts, came across this beautiful and useful image summarising a lot of things that are good to know in terms of design
    http://evolve8.com/i-typography

    linked of this cool page of typography designs
    http://www.noupe.com/wallpaper/50-stunning-typography-wallpapers-for-inspiration.html

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