Tags: typography

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Tuesday, April 12th, 2022

Thoughts on Exerting Control With Media Queries - Jim Nielsen’s Blog

Some thoughts on CSS, media queries, and fluid type prompted by Utopia:

We say CSS is “declarative”, but the more and more I write breakpoints to accommodate all the different ways a design can change across the viewport spectrum, the more I feel like I’m writing imperative code. At what quantity does a set of declarative rules begin to look like imperative instructions?

In contrast, one of the principles of Utopia is to be declarative and “describe what is to be done rather than command how to do it”. This approach declares a set of rules such that you could pick any viewport width and, using a formula, derive what the type size and spacing would be at that size.

Saturday, March 5th, 2022

Utopia - an introduction - YouTube

James and Trys have made this terrific explanatory video about Utopia. They pack a lot into less than twenty minutes but it’s all very clearly and methodically explained.

Utopia - an introduction

Sunday, February 6th, 2022

Monday, January 31st, 2022

Fluid type sizes and spacing — Piper Haywood

Prompted by Utopia, Piper shares her methodology for fluid type in Sass.

Thursday, December 30th, 2021

Manrope – free sans-serif variable font

This font is a crossover of different font types: it is semi-condensed, semi-rounded, semi-geometric, semi-din, semi-grotesque. It employs minimal stoke thickness variations and a semi-closed aperture.

Saturday, December 11th, 2021

More writing on web.dev

Last month I wrote about writing on web.dev. At that time, the first five parts of a fourteen-part course on responsive design had been published. I’m pleased to say that the next five parts are now available. They are:

  1. Typography
  2. Responsive images
  3. The picture element
  4. Icons
  5. Theming

It wasn’t planned, but these five modules feel like they belong together. The first five modules were concerned with layout tools—media queries, flexbox, grid, and even container queries. The latest five modules are about the individual elements of design—type, colour, and images. But those elements are examined through the lens of responsiveness; responsive typography with clamp, responsive colour with prefers-color-scheme, and responsive images with picture and srcset.

The final five modules should be available later this month. In the mean time, I hope you like the first ten modules.

Sunday, November 28th, 2021

My Custom CSS Reset

This CSS reset is pleasantly minimalist and a lot of thought has gone into each step. The bit about calculating line height is very intriguing!

Tuesday, October 19th, 2021

Seb Lester’s Favorite Fonts

Seb picks his top ten typefaces inspired by calligraphy.

Wednesday, August 18th, 2021

MD Nichrome by Mass-Driver

Marvin has some competition! Here’s another beautiful sci-fi variable font:

MD Nichrome is a display typeface based on the typography of paperback science fiction from the 70s and early 80s.

Wednesday, June 23rd, 2021

Sans Bullshit Sans — Leveraging the synergy of ligatures

As part of my content buddying process, I am henceforth going to typeset all drafts in this font. I just tested it with this sentence:

We can leverage the synergy of a rich immersive user paradigm shift.

Sunday, June 6th, 2021

Saturday, April 24th, 2021

CSS Font Lorem Ipsum

Professional web designer on a closed course. Do not attempt.

Wednesday, April 21st, 2021

PlymouthPress – A Letterpress Image Font

An experimental image font made using the University of Plymouth’s unique letterpress workshop.

Grungy!

The font is intended for display purposes only, and not is suitable for body text.

Tuesday, April 6th, 2021

Uppestcase and Lowestcase Letters: Advances in Derp Learning

A genuinely interesting (and droll) deep dive into derp learning …for typography!

Thursday, April 1st, 2021

Meet Utopia: Designing And Building With Fluid Type And Space Scales — Smashing Magazine

An excellent explainer from Trys and James of their supersmart Utopia approach:

Utopia encourages the curation of a system small enough to be held in short-term memory, rather than one so sprawling it must be constantly referred to.

Wednesday, March 17th, 2021

Fluid Space Calculator | Utopia

Type and space are linked, so if you’re going to have a fluid type calculator, it makes sense to have a fluid space calculator too. More great work from Trys and James!

Monday, March 8th, 2021

System fonts don’t have to be ugly /// Iain Bean

You don’t have to use web fonts—there are some pretty nice options if you stick to system fonts (like Georgia, Charter, and Palatino).

Monday, March 1st, 2021

Proxima Vara by Mark Simonson

Oh, nice! A version of the classic Proxima Nova that’s a variable font that allows you to vary weight, width, and slant.

Thursday, February 4th, 2021

Continuous Typography / MK

Sounds like some convergent thinking with the ideas behind Utopia.

I think that the idea that that any typographic attribute (including variable font parameters) can be a function (linear, exponential, stepped, Bezier, random, or otherwise) of any given input variable (user preference, screen dimensions, connection speed, time of day, display language, or whatever else) is an incredibly powerful one, and worth exploring as an aesthetic as well as a technical proposition.

Here’s a demo you can play with.