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8 fonts you probably don’t use in css, but should

Mat — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 15:52:57 +0000

[Excellent article from 3.7CREA.TV - click here for original article]

CSS has brought us many capabilities in terms of typography and the web, but we always seem to be limited to the same 4-5 typefaces over and over again. There is an inherant problem, if the font you specify isn’t on the viewers computer it won’t render in that font. So as designers and developers we end up selecting the ones that we can safely assume is available on most computers today. So most pages use Arial, Helvetica, or Georgia as their typefaces… and the world of the web remains slightly more bland.

But there are quite a few high quality typefaces that are available on most new computer systems and you can always fall back on the common ones. Of course there are options like creating images, dynamic headlines, and siFR… but all of these techniques increase load time and development time. There are plenty of good reasons to be strategic in the font choices rather than using additional technology. I am shocked at how rarely I see anyone taking advantage of these type options, so here is a quick and dirty list of fonts you should and could use in your desgns and stylesheets.

1. Palatino Linotype / Palatino

WINDOWS 97.09% / MAC 78.86%

This is a nice serif font that his pretty good support for both Mac and Windows based machines (97.09% of all windows machines have it, and 78.86% of mac’s). Yet very few people use it and instead default to georgia or times. As you can see it makes for great headlines, and I have used it with success as copy type as well. Worse case you can always default back to georgia, times, etc.

2. Tahoma

WINDOWS 96.09% / MAC 72.02%

I admit this is not one of my favorite fonts, but it does have many instances where it could be used effectively. It doesn’t seem to get used very often despite the fact that it could be an excellent copy font. Again there is always Arial or Helvetica if the machine doesn’t have Tahoma installed.

3. Impact

WINDOWS 95.85% / MAC 88.08%

Admittedly this font probably is overused in non-web related design. Since it is one of the “cooler” default fonts on most machines it tends to get a lot of use. Despite this fact there are plenty of good places to use it, and it works great for well… “impactfull” headlines.

4. Century Gothic

WINDOWS 85.44% / MAC 42.50%

This is a nice elegant font that was overused by graphic designers some time ago, but it has been locked away and shunned for some time now. It may almost be time to pull it back out of the tool chest. Not a huge percent of Mac systems come with it preinstalled, but most new ones do. Depending on your target audience this could be the perfect font to use. If you are worried about the low mac support you could always opt for Futura as well (which has very high mac support).

5. Arial Black

WINDOWS 97.73% / MAC 96.18%

Yup you don’t just have to use plain old Arial. Arial black is a nice bold font that could be perfect for headings, impacting headlines, and hell even a replacement for the Impact font mentioned above. I don’t know that I would use it for body text, but it is an option that should be realized in web typography.

6. Arial Narrow

WINDOWS 87.08% / MAC 91.01%

Arial again! We are not done yet, oh no. Much like arial black, arial narrow is a great font for headlines. Instead of the big bold in your face style of headlines you can use this typeface for more elegant subtle headlines. A nice change from the traditional arial, and can be used much like you would a condensed font.

7. Copperplate / Copperplate Gothic Light

WINDOWS 58.13% / MAC 85.85%

I will admit I hate this font, mostly because it is misused (and people will probably argue that it is not the fonts fault, but the designers). But there are times when it can be used effectively, and it has pretty good support on newer windows computers and most mac based computers. Most likely it will again be for headlines, larger headlines, as it is not terribly legible at small fonts especially when it isn’t properly aliased.

8. Gill Sans / Gill Sans MT

WINDOWS 43.09% / MAC 90.82%

No surprise I like this font. I think it works both in copy and in headlines, and it has fair support in both platforms. Anytime you use a font that has about 50% support rate you want to think about the next logical font to serve, but there are enough options specific to windows that would let you achieve the same typographic message with only subtle differences.

Has social networking gone too far? Or are we just bored?

Mat — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 08:29:43 +0000

So I’ve been contemplating the whole idea of social networking and the proliferation of tools and APIs now available to support it. I honestly admit, I never got the whole MySpace thing and despite that I write a blog or two, there’s a lot of tools I just really don’t get. Take twittering for one. I get that people have this insane need to be heard and “seen” and that the digital age made it just that much easier for individuals to leave obscurity and become rockstars in their own minds. But why in the world would anyone want to follow someone else’s life through simply “watching” what they do?

Weigh in please … I am dying to understand this.

I want…

Mat — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 08:23:44 +0000

Those of you who know me know I rarely ever really want anything (material that is)…even the iPhone, nah. But this caught my eye…the HTC Touch Pro. Unfortunately not available in the US until late 2008. Figures.

Applying Divine Proportion to your Web Design

Mat — Fri, 30 May 2008 23:13:08 +0000

Effective web design doesn’t have to be pretty and colorful — it has to be clear and intuitive; in fact, we have analyzed the principles of effective design in our previous posts. However, how can you achieve a clear and intuitive design solution? Well, there are a number of options — for instance, you can use grids, you can prefer the simplest solutions or you can focus on usability. However, in each of these cases you need to make sure your visitors have some natural sense of order, harmony, balance and comfort. And this is exactly where the so-called Divine proportion becomes important.

This article explains what is the Divine proportion and what is the Rule of Thirds and describes how you can apply both of them effectively to your designs. Of course, there are many possibilities. Hopefully, this post will help you to find your way to more effective and beautiful web designs or at least provide some good starting points you can build upon or develop further.

[Read the rest - via Smashing Magazine]

Reflows

Mat — Wed, 28 May 2008 06:45:10 +0000

Asked frequently about how pages get rendered in a browser, and invariably stumped for an easy response(and never seeming to find one), here’s one pretty interesting way to look at it…

In his blog, DougT explains the concept of reflow which Mozilla defines as the process by which the geometry of the layout engine’s formatting objects are computed. In any case, a couple of good examples cropped up on the net including this one below. Check out this post for a couple more.

Back in the saddle

Mat — Tue, 27 May 2008 06:10:59 +0000

I just got back from NYC after spending a week at the National Stationery Show in support of madebygirl.com. It was an interesting experience in many ways, most notably being in an arena where technology was basically unimportant and visuals and textures and personality were the ruling parties. You can check out some photos here and here.

And despite having Internet in the hotel, I don’t think I opened my laptop at all. Instead, for once, I took the time to actually enjoy New York and the people and buzz. Good fun.

In the meantime, I left every class with assignments … get to work!

He gets it…

Mat — Tue, 06 May 2008 08:21:06 +0000

So in another bird to the naysayers who think the old school record labels still wield the power, NIN now (following the Niggy Tardust and Ghost releases I wrote about previously) just released their/his new album (The Slip) for free. Free. At this point, I don’t have anything else to say. As for the title of the post, I’m responding to this article from DownloadSquad – NIN gives away another album, either Reznor gets it, or he’s just rich. I’ve long maintained that, at least for the business side of things, he gets it. I can’t even say I really like the music all that much. But as a testament to its success, once again the servers were slammed – and that was just to get the torrent. But at least it’s nice to see that new avenues are being explored, that musicians are taking it upon themselves to look to the long term gains from free distribution, to use torrents to make distribution efficient and cost effective.

Happy Birthday www

Mat — Fri, 02 May 2008 02:56:00 +0000

photo:abrazee

Happy Birthday to the World Wide Web, born 15 years ago yesterday! Yeehaw – throw party! Can you imagine what you would do in class if you couldn’t watch YouTube or check your MySpace (puke) page while I was lecturing! Oh the horror!

And for those of you who are really geeky/nerdy/dweeby [join my club] today is the 44th anniversary of the first program written in Basic. To really grasp what efforts the two academics that did it had to go through and then contrast it against what things are like today, read about it here.

Tapping the collective group mind

Mat — Thu, 01 May 2008 18:45:54 +0000

One way to generate more excitement and brainstorm when working on group or collaborative projects is to approach it a bit differently than you may have in the past. Regularly at my job managing research & development at iStreamPlanet, we spend hours investigating different paths of development, exploring ideas and experiences, thinking way beyond the confines of normal programmatic or visual design practices…it has become a hallmark of how we are able to create efficiently and quickly produced solutions to technological problems.

Image: Adaptive PathI was also recently at Mix08 where it was apparent that there was an huge interest in more collaborative approaches to problem solving and with the advent of socializing technologies, you should broaden your means of getting ideas generated.

I was prompted to think about this after reading a blog post on Adaptive Path about this very topic here and after watching one of my own UCD groups use overhead projections and whiteboarding. But this is only a slice of the puzzle. Be proactive, and be open-minded when searching for solutions. Use colors, use technologies, use visuals and be big. The answer is always out there, but it may be buried in a mound of ideas, so give it a reason to pop out.

[read "Tapping Into Conference Participants’ Brilliance"]

Struggling with HTML and CSS?

Mat — Thu, 01 May 2008 10:15:47 +0000

Perspective…[eldavojohn writes] “The design director of NYTimes.com, Khoi Vinh, recently answered readers’ questions in the Times’s occasional feature ‘Ask the Times.’ He was asked how the Web site looks so consistently nice and polished no matter which browser or resolution is used to access it. His answer begins: ‘It’s our preference to use a text editor, like HomeSite, TextPad or TextMate, to “hand code” everything, rather than to use a wysiwyg (what you see is what you get) HTML and CSS authoring program, like Dreamweaver. We just find it yields better and faster results.’”

[via Slashdot]