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by outworlder 1712 days ago
Just a bloody font, the choice of which can greatly enhance your experience (or detract from it).

I would recommend https://practicaltypography.com/

EDIT: mind you, typography is much more than 'just fonts'.

1 comments

I've started reading it. I'll finish it.

But it's subjectively the worst font (or layout, or kerning, or aliasing, or something - I'm extremely not an expert:) I've seen since... mid-90's? I don't know HOW they made it look that bad; I checked if they were accidentally-enlarged images, but nope.

In addition to letters looking (subjectively) bad, it also looks strange. Kernings looks slightly off, and the "Small but necessary interruption" feels like it has another 3 fonts in there. Perhaps They're just lighter or narrow variations (again, not an expert), and then the user-added ALL CAPS with different spacing yet... it feels I'm reading 19th century print. Which is quaint, might be precisely what author is looking for (I once spent an hour trying to get letters on a CD look JUST the right amount of offset and wobbly :P ), but feels a bit... old school.

https://practicaltypography.com/typography-in-ten-minutes.ht...

Yeah it's strange, the content is about typography, but something about it is really hard to look at, at least on Mozilla Firefox. On some pages e.g. the typography-in-ten-minutes page it looks like the first paragraph is slightly, but not obviously, larger than the subsequent paragraphs.

Everything seems stretched vertically, and the stuff in all-caps is borderline A E S T H E T I C with the horizontal spacing.

It's not ALL CAPS but sᴍᴀʟʟ ᴄᴀᴘs[0]. The author uses them as links, perhaps to illustrate this very difference. See also 14, 15 from "Summary of key rules"[1].

Sorry for the nitpick, but at the end that's actually what 90% of typography is all about, tiny details.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_caps

[1]: https://practicaltypography.com/summary-of-key-rules.html

Interesting, it does look different on Firefox (vs Chrome-based browsers).
No problems with kerning on my device, that I can see.

The fonts used, just like in books, each have their purpose - https://practicaltypography.com/how-to-use.html

Also, you can change the body text font by clicking the font name at the bottom.

I've tried it on iPhone and chrome and looks ok.

Firefox in 27" still looks significantly off

Any suggestions on good reading to learn?