We’ve written 6 blog posts about Typography. View all topics »
For each development project at Happy Cog, we start with a set of starter files. Much like HTML5 Boilerplate or other similar initiatives, it’s intended to get us going as quick as possible. In that spirit, I’ve been thinking about how to move the needle in that direction as far as possible. The trick is to do so without burdening development with too many constraints and limitations.
Choosing a type palette goes beyond considering aesthetics, legibility, browser support, and performance. For fonts to truly be appropriate for your project, they must also be technically and financially sound solutions. No one wants to be surprised by the outrageous cost of a font package after all designs have been delivered.
As the year winds down it’s time to take stock of 2014. Turning over a new year provides us with the opportunity to reflect and look forward. The web is an ever-evolving platform with new technology, techniques, and paradigms taking hold all the time. I’m excited about the direction the web has taken in 2014 and have learned a lot over the past year. That said, here are some highlights of these developments in the past year.
It’s no secret designers love typefaces. Web design is 95% typography, and it’s hailed as the most important aspect of a design. So, it’s imperative to find typefaces that accurately convey the voice of our words. Designers may not be always thinking about it, but how a site performs can be as important as choosing the right typeface. The weight of a font kit is arguably more important to a site’s performance versus other heavy hitters (like images), because fonts are loaded on every single page. And, after all, if a site loads too slowly, users won’t view the typography as you’ve intended!
As the web evolves, there will always be two ever-growing lists: one of all the pieces of content that will need to appear on any given site over time and another with all the ways we can access that content. Creating flexible, modular design systems makes both of these lists a little less daunting and a lot more manageable.
At Happy Cog, we pride ourselves on empowering clients to take ownership of their content, and we provide a framework and all the building blocks to help them do so. These building blocks range depending on a project’s needs. One could be a video carousel; another a contact form. But, the most fundamental building block that’s on every site and we have to get right every time is typography.
“Whether the type is set in hard metal by hand, or in softer metal by machine, or in digital form on paper or film, every comma, every parenthesis, every e and in context even every empty space, has style as well as bald symbolic value. Letters are microscopic works of art as well as useful symbols. They mean what they are as well as what they say.”
— Robert Bringhurst The Elements of Typographic Style
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