Typography on the ‘net
As I’ve delved further into the world of CSS, I’ve been constantly amazed with what people are doing typographically via that medium. Honestly, I have thought for a long time that with the advent of the internet, the rules and best-practices of typography would be ignored to a greater and greater extent. En-dashes and em-dashes would have very little distinction; small-caps would lose their place in the world; hyphenation would either be abandoned or used with abandon.
Every now and then I come across a page that shows great care and respect for typography and I wonder whether the person who created the page is an island unto themselves. Are they fighting a losing battle with the internet at large? Do they still create pages that uphold typographic ideals, even though it takes a great deal more effort? Should I write them a thank-you note?
I’m coming to realize, however, that the forces of good typography are more widespread than I originally believed. There are video tutorials that can teach folks about letterspacing and leading (”line-height”– we had to compromise on the terminology, it seems). Sites like A List Apart show exactly what’s possible if a developer has an eye toward design and type best-practices. We see through designers like Jason Santa Maria that creativity is unbounded, even in the realm of system-friendly fonts. But the site that really brought all of this home for me is Webtypography.net– a site sprung from the classic book, “The Elements of Typographic Style.”
The site is wholly devoted to giving typographic advice to designers/developers/coders while simultaneously furnishing them with the code used to achieve the desired effect. It’s a godsend for someone like me who is still learning and hacking together what I think is right in order to attain a look that I know is right. Tough stuff, this web stuff. The website is arranged like a beautifully-composed book and that only serves to strengthen my good opinion regarding its content. Check it out if you have any inclination toward improving your typographic style, and code.
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