One of the important factors in a customer’s decision of whether to use a product is usually the brand’s visual presence, which can help a product stand out from the rest of what the market has to offer. Upon taking a closer look, it doesn’t take long to see that good typography is involved. Akira Kobayashi believes that good typography reinforces the meaning of the text. He has a background in art and calligraphy and has been a freelance type designer for 18 years.
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One could easily argue that nothing affects a design more than typography. And good typography starts with choosing an appropriate typeface. But can having too much choice be a bad thing? In this article, Jeremiah Shoaf reviews a collection of beautiful websites and analyzes the impact that their designers’ typeface choices have had on the overall designs. She’ll critique both the good and the bad. Of course, type is subjective, so take any critiques with a grain of salt. Let’s dig in!
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While a good measure does improve the reading experience, it’s only one rule for good typography. Another rule is to maintain a comfortable font size. Designing on a desktop or laptop browser means that we are spending most of our time at an arm’s length from the text, and we don’t spend much time seeing how the text renders on small devices. A good font size (not too small) is readable. A good font size (not too big) promotes horizontal eye motion. A good font size with the proper line height will help your readers find what they’re looking for.
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Creating a typeface in a day is possible, but it takes months or even years to finish all of the glyphs and for testing and production. When one writes by hand, every letter is a little different. In this article Harald Geisler would like to share a hands-on overview of his creation process of creating a handwriting font inspired by the Sigmund Freud typeface. Handwritten text shows a personal side of its author, one that contrasts with the standardized look of digital communication. This contrast is perhaps what makes handwriting fonts so popular. Harald hopes you find this to be a helpful introduction to creating handwriting fonts.
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John Holt Ripley was working on a website that required a number of icons. “I know how to handle this. I’ll use an @font-face icon set for high-resolution screens. It’ll be a single file, to reduce HTTP requests, and I’ll include just the icons that I need, to reduce file size.” he thought. Until he ran the page in the device lab. On some devices, a number of the icons weren’t showing. Yet on the same devices, others were, so clearly it wasn’t an @font-face issue. It must have been the underlying Unicode.
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Khajag Apelian not only is a talented type and graphic designer, unsurprisingly, but also counts Disney as a client, as well as a number of local and not-for-profit organizations throughout the Middle East. Designing a quality typeface is a daunting task when it’s only in the Latin alphabet. Khajag goes deeper still, having designed a Latin-Armenian dual-script typeface in four weights, named “Arek”, as well as an Arabic adaptation of Typotheque’s Fedra Display.
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With time, Arabic calligraphy began to be used in architecture, decoration and coin design, and it continues to develop both in traditional methods as well as in digital and computer-generated arts. Arabic calligraphers from around the world continue to develop their own styles and artwork based on existing scripts and their own letters and scripts. Free modern scripts contribute to the art just as much as traditional scripts have done.
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The quality of available free fonts has increased dramatically. Fee fonts don’t have a good reputation, and often they are knock-offs of thoroughly crafted, already established typefaces. So is it time for professional designers to take a second look? Thanks to the open-source community, there are now free fonts available that even typography snobs would be happy to use. The following fonts all have multiple weights with matching italics. They are suitable for headlines as well as body copy, and they render well on screen and at small sizes.
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A type design brief is like a charter path: It asks you questions, and the answers will guide you to where you want to be. The walk won’t be much shorter, but the chances of getting lost will be lower. In this article, Nadine Chahine shares six questions that will shape the typeface through its first moments of creation and serve as guiding principles through the various stages of the design.
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Here at Smashing Magazine, our aim is to highlight topics that inspire, challenge, and motivate us to do more and do it better. The design-related content that is published in the Design category of the magazine is dedicated to our cherished community of designers (developers and other are welcome too, of course!) who want to help each other as well as learn from each other.
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