Right now, I'm trying to learn a few things about webdesign, and I have spent some time on typography yet. However, I know a few basics now, a few things about typography history, but I have never been able to find tutorials about the "why should I use this typeface or this other one there". It's like everybody is able to speak about typography theory but not about practice and thinking.
Someone knows where I can find other articles about practice ? Thanks !
My personal favorite is Mike Butterick's Practical Typography. He's a programmer, typographer, and lawyer and the book is entirely web based. They're static pages generated by code he wrote in Racket, a language in the Lisp family.
+1 vote for Practical Typography. It's simple and straightforward, and it's oriented toward the average person rather than professional designers. And since it's available in full on the web, you don't have to pay anything to start reading it.
I was actually okay with the plugs for his own typefaces. Since the book was free, I thought it was fair that he suggest people buy his typefaces to pay for the free product especially since many will be taking his advice to create products that are intended to make money.
But yes, an absolutely accessible and excellent resource. I've been sending to links to various pages and chapters to my friends in the hopes that they'll choose better typefaces after reading.
Font selection is definitely more of an art than a science, and because of this trying to apply the theory of font selection to actual practice is difficult!
Precisely the reason for attempting to chronicle the journey. Thanks for your interest. Its not very common to come across documentation of subtle aspects of design decisions like type choices.
The eye is a creature of habit. Bad typography helps people read your copy, while bad typography prevents them from doing so. This is it.
Here's a good example. Why are headlines in all caps hard to read? Because they have no ascenders or descenders to help you read words and thus you have to read the headline letter by letter. You should never superimpose your headline on an image because that makes it hard to read.
Right now, I'm trying to learn a few things about webdesign, and I have spent some time on typography yet. However, I know a few basics now, a few things about typography history, but I have never been able to find tutorials about the "why should I use this typeface or this other one there". It's like everybody is able to speak about typography theory but not about practice and thinking.
Someone knows where I can find other articles about practice ? Thanks !