typography
Are mobile devices changing the way we read on the Web?
If you’re a hard core fan of Apple products, you’ve no doubt paid attention to yesterday’s announcement about the iPad 2. I must admit, I do own several Mac products, but I’ve never been first in line to get the new iToy. I did purchase an iPad when they first came out and I do enjoy it, but I won’t buy another until this one breaks. As far as I can tell, the iPad is great for playing games, reading e-Books and… that’s about it.
I still like the tactile feel of paper and so prefer my books the old fashion way, but the iPad has changed the way I read online blog posts and articles.
Instapaper makes this tasks wonderfully pleasing
Instapaper is an online tool, which once you’ve set up a Free account, allows you to save articles to read later. During the day, I’ll bookmark several of these using my Read Later bookmarklet and then in the evening will read them on the iPad. Best of all, Instapaper, strips all of the design, clutter, advertising and displays the article in a large black font making it so much more enjoyable.
I enjoy reading articles this way so much, that I’ve also installed another bookmarklet called Read Now. This bookmarklet also strips all of the clutter and provides you with an easy to read article with large fonts but it displays it in front of you right away instead of saving the article in your account.
What does this mean for typography?
As a designer, you should be aware of the typography limitations on the web. Common browser fonts are still you’re best bet for body text, but much more leeway can be had now with headlines. The Google web fonts api and typekit offers loads of new fonts to play with. These are easy to use and have been tested thoroughly. Typekit’s blog is a great resource to see how others are using various typefaces.
Do keep in mind though, that you no longer have control of your audience. With just a simple click of a button, I can make all of your design disappear and make the fonts bigger. So before spending hundreds of hours researching the right font and debating with your client, do keep in mind that your hard work may not be appreciated.
What about mock-ups?
If you’re concerned about fonts in your mock-ups, Google’s web fonts api allows you to download the font with the added option of contributing a small amount to the font designer. Another great resource for finding web fonts for your mock-ups is at Font Squirrel. All of the fonts are safe to embed in websites.
Just as an aside, if you’re looking for image placeholders, take a look at placekitten. Who will say no to your design mock-ups now?
Incorporate Cufón in WordPress
Every once in a while comes a project where using a font other than verdana, arial, trebuchet or tahoma would be nice. I recently finished a website for Tod Maffin where, Rob, the designer chose Sansa Condensed as the font of choice for headings. I could have created images for all of the page headings, but I wanted to give Tod the ability to update them if he chose to and more importantly, I also wanted to use the same font for the headings of blog posts. After reading about the alternatives, I decided to give cufón a try and was quite surprised to discover how easy it is.
Here are the steps required to integrate cufón in your wordPress site:
Step 1 – Get cufón
Visit the cufón website and download the YUI-compressed version of cufón. Save this js file in a js folder in your wordPress theme.
Step 2 – Generate your font file
Follow the steps on the Cufón website and add the generated js file to your js folder in your wordPress theme. You’ll be required to upload your font files and thus you need to have purchased them as well as verified that your fonts are legal to use in font embedding. Upload your js folder in your wordPress theme via FTP.
Step 3 – Add the code to your wordPress template
To use cufón, simply add the following lines of code to your header.php file.
<script type="text/javascript" src="<?php bloginfo('template_directory'); ?>/js/cufon-yui.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="<?php bloginfo('template_directory'); ?>/js/your_cufon_generated_font_file.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
Cufon.replace('h1');
Cufon.replace('h2');
</script>
These few lines of code will convert all of your h1 and h2 into my selected font. That’s it.