VOCAL
Each typeface highlights a piece of history from a specific underrepresented race, ethnicity, or gender—from the Women’s Suffrage Movement in Argentina to the Civil Rights Movement in America.
Tags: fonts
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Progressive Font Enrichment: reinventing web font performance | Responsive Web Typography
Jason describes the next big thing in web typography: streaming fonts!
…to enable the ability for only the required part of the font be downloaded on any given page, and for subsequent requests for that font to dynamically ‘patch’ the original download with additional sets of glyphs as required on successive page views—even if they occur on separate sites.
Public Sans
A free and open source neutral sans-serif typeface, released as part of version two of the design system for the US federal government.
Intro to Font Metrics
Font metrics help the computer determine things like the default spacing between lines, how high or low sub and super scripts should go, and how to align two differently sized pieces of text next to each other.
Programming Fonts - Test Drive
Monospaced fonts you can use in your text editor. Most of them are …not good. But then there are gems like Mark Simonson’s Anonymous Pro, David Jonathan Ross’s Input, and Erik Spiekerman’s Fira Mono. And there’s always good ol’ Droid Sans.
Bodoni*
An open source version of Bodoni:
Bodoni* is the first ever no-compromises Bodoni family, built for the digital age. Years in the making, this font family includes a whopping 56 font files, ensuring you will have the perfect Bodoni for every situation.
Jongert
Nick demonstrates the responsive power of variable fonts by recreating a lovely design from Jacob Jongert.
Grab that browser window and get squishin’!
Private by Default
Feedbin has removed third-party iframes and JavaScript (oEmbed provides a nice alternative), as well as stripping out Google Analytics, and even web fonts that aren’t self-hosted. This is excellent!
The Font Loading Checklist—zachleat.com
This checklist came in very handy during a performance-related workshop I was running today (I may have said the sentence “Always ask yourself What Would Zach Do?”).
- Start Important Font Downloads Earlier (Start a Web Font load)
- Prioritize Readable Text (Behavior while a Web Font is loading)
- Make Fonts Smaller (Reduce Web Font load time)
- Reduce Movement during Page Load (Behavior after a Web Font has loaded)
The first two are really straightforward to implement (with rel="preload" and font-display). The second two take more work (with subsetting and the font loading API).
The Complete CSS Demo for OpenType Features - OpenType Features in CSS
Every single font-feature-settings value demonstrated in one single page.
Monotype restored the font Walbaum, a 200-year-old serif typeface — Quartzy
The history and restoratin of a neglected typeface, complete with this great explanation of optical sizing:
Nix illustrated the point with an analogy: “Imagine if we all decided that 10-year-old boys would be the optimal human form,” he says. “Rather than having babies, we just shrunk 10-year-old boys to baby size, and enlarge them to the size of a full grown man. That’s kind of what we’re combatting.”
Transform your type online with variable fonts | Creative Bloq
This is a great interview with Rich on all things related to web typography—including, of course, variable fonts.
I’m so lucky that I literally get to work side by side with Rich; I get to geek out with him about font stuff all the time.
Font Playground — Play with variable fonts!
A fun way to play around with the options in variable fonts.
Fonty: the new way for testing web fonts
This is very neat! Test out how Google Fonts will look on your website: type in your URL and away you go. Works well on mobile too.
Ampersand 2018 | Rob Weychert
Rob attended the excellent Ampersand event last Friday and he’s made notes for each and every talk.
Pixels vs. Ems: Users DO Change Font Size – Evan Minto – Medium
I have to admit, I didn’t realise that text reszing behaved differently for user preferences compared to page zoom. For that reason alone, I’m going to avoid setting font sizes in pixels.
If 2 to 3% (or more!) of your users are relying on a custom font size, you should know that so you can either support that user preference or make a conscious decision to not support it. Doing anything less is frankly irresponsible, especially considering that users with larger font sizes may be using those sizes to compensate for visual disabilities.
Your Brain on Front-End Development | CSS-Tricks
I find this soooo relatable:
I know when I look at a design (heck, even if I know I’m not going to be building it), my front-end brain starts triggering all sorts of things I know will be related to the task.
Difference is, Chris comes up with some very, very clever techniques.
Text Effects - a Collection by Mandy Michael on CodePen
Mandy’s experiments with text effects in CSS are kinda mindblowing—I can’t wait to see her at Ampersand at the end of the month!
Fontjoy - Generate font pairings in one click
This looks like fun: it’s like a clever slot machine for pairing typefaces.
I thought the “machine learning” angle sounded like marketing bullshit, but it’s genuinely fascinating.