Professional Web Typography

Presenting beautiful type on your website nowadays could not be easier, getting web-ready typefaces to display on a site is as simple as adding one line of markup. However, with too many choices at your disposal, the process of selecting and combining typefaces can be time-consuming, overwhelming, and intimidating.

In this book, the goal is to prove that typesetting is fun and rewarding-not intimidating. Whenever applicable, Donny will share the process that helped him make the appropriate type selection for specific assignments in his work as examples for you to examine. Through his process, he hopes to inspire you to discover your own. He will also cover CSS techniques that are related to typography and try to keep the technical aspects as simple as possible. You will have the chance to download all the example files, which he has uploaded to GitHub, to play with.

Donny learned typography through obsessive and extensive reading on the subject. He works full time as a web developer and designer at the George Mason University School of Law. Besides the free tuition, one of the perks of working at a university is having full access to the library. Mason has an excellent collection of books on typography and he has read most of them during the past three years. He even started acquiring his own collection with books that he wants to keep for reference.

Although most of the books he has read apply to print design, his true passion is the web. He started his web design profession early 2002, but the web has only made an exciting transformation within the past few years, thanks to the explosion of web fonts (and web font services to accommodate them). In spite of these fairly recent changes and emergences, typography remains a craft that is honed, nurtured, and acquired over time, with patience and practice. Join Donny in a journey to explore this craft.

Chapters

• A Brief History of Web Typography
• Delivering Web Fonts
• Selecting Body Text
• Setting Type in the Browser
• Choosing Headings
• Picking Type for UI
• Seeing Typographic Details
• Practicing Typography
• Conclusion