On Web Typography

Typography, or the science of fonts, has always been an important vehicle to communicate ideas. Printing presses used typography to achieve mass communication. In the age of Internet instantaneity, nothing has changed much as good fonts continue to be central means to convey concepts with the masses.Unfortunately, many users still default to a few common fonts like Helvetica/Arial or Times New Roman. In this book, Santa Maria seeks to free designers – and also general users – to be more stylish by adopting different font combinations. He teaches the basics of font design, including how to break down varying mechanisms that make a font unique. Then he shares how these can be used to select font combinations in web communications.The last chapter – on putting these in a coded web design – is a bit more dated than the rest (since this book came out in 2014). However, most of the book still describes the state of the art, with copious examples and graphics. Most helpfully, a list of resources attached in an appendix allows readers to get started quickly.Audiences include not only web designers and developers but anyone who uses computers to communicate. In our age, who honestly doesn’t this describe? Typography is just another tool to use to stand out from the crowd. Santa Maria points the way through applications of timeless design principles adapted for the newest technologies.

I need it for my typography class.

Purchased as a gift. My niece was happy to receive it....so I'm assuming all is well!

This book serves as a primer for (not only) web designers who are new to typography. And rightly so. These days there are so many options abound for typesetting text that the average Joe often is overwhelmed by all the possibilities, fonts, sizes, etc. and forgets to consider overall layout and legibility. All to often less variation in presentations, documents and web pages would be more. The book stresses the fact that typography should help in reading and understanding a text rather than get in the way of the reader. Very sound advice.There are not really hard rules in typography, no clear wrongs and rights valid in all situations. So Jason starts out with a short overview of how we are reading, followed by some info on how type works. Without thinking about these 'mechanics', you'd have nothing to base your selection of typefaces, widths, sizes etc. on. The text then goes on explaining some more type-technical stuff like boxes, height, various attributes and how to choose typefaces which match or complement each other. Good advice also about creating a hierarchical typographic system for your project. Finally, some words about overall page layout (horizontal, vertical, grid), which I think is especially important in web design.There are no hard rules given on how to typeset something, but sound advice. And this advice is not only true for web page design. In the part which talks about various typefaces (commonly called fonts), their features and their distinctions, you can easily feel the authors interest for the details of all the various fonts. For the non-professional designer this can, at times, be a bit too detailed, differences between shown fonts too small to really notice.Don't expect to be a top notch web page layout pro after reading this book, but heeding the advice given, you should not fall prey any more to some of the most common problems. And this is not only true for web pages, take the advice for all text you produce or set.