Type

Chapter 8 of White Space is Not Your Enemy deals with type. We've talked about different fonts quite a bit, but this chapter goes more in depth. It explains glyphs, the parts of a font, types and characteristics, and when to use which type of font. To go deeper, it even gets into kerning, leading, tracking, swash alternatives, ligatures, and typesetting. If you've ever been formatting some text for a project and realized it was almost but not quite right, those are things you need to learn to make the tweaks to your copy that will perfect it. You'd be surprised how much additional spacing between letters, a few alternates, and better leading can improve readability in layouts and papers.

Another good bit of advice is to avoid overly used fonts. Just as you don't want the same design or content as everyone else, you don't want the same font for your headers or logos that everyone else is using. (This doesn't imply to invisible fonts for copy, such as Arial.) For example, this font is everywhere. (No, really.)

If you're in need of some more good fonts, I suggest DaFont.com. It has tons of fonts that can easily be sorted, searched and downloaded, and includes the licensing information. If you want to sell your work some day, pay attention to those licenses. Some font makers license their work only for private/personal use, some don't care what you use it for, some only want credit, and some want a payment if you use the font for a commercial purpose. It's usually pretty cheap... and if you're going to make your buck using their work, they deserve the $10 for the work they put in the obviously good font.

Chapter 14 of Golombisky & Hagen's White Space is Not Your Enemy is absolutely full of great information for those who want to create a website the right way. It covers basic design elements for the web; points out problem areas that most people don't think about like color shift, font scaling, and fixed vs. fluid layouts on different monitor sizes; and discusses the purpose of websites and how to choose if a domain is right for your project versus a web log or social media profile.

For me, this information wasn't new. However, I think it would be a very useful tool for anyone starting a website. Most people, even those who use the Internet regularly, don't understand what really goes into creating your own website from scratch; the diagrams and paragraphs explaining the relationship between your computer, your domain name, and your live website spell things out well.

Most of the information in the design sections seems trivial at best, common sense at worst - but it's not. People make horribly ugly, completely unnavigable, badly organized, utterly pointless websites all the frakking time. Since our generation has grown up with the Internet, we think we know best and we're not going to pay someone to do it for us or buy a book to self-teach. Couple that with the fact that most of the time when we see a boring or badly designed website, we just back out of it instead of leaving feedback, and you can see why it's so easy for crummy sites to exist.

This isn't just a web problem. This weekend, I went to a pizza place, and perused the rest of the menu while waiting for my order. They had multiple errors, badly written sentences, and a poorly designed logo. I just shook my head and sighed - how are writers and graphic designers ever supposed to get jobs, if people don't feel the quality of things like menus is important enough to pay for? The pizza was absolutely fantastic, but badly done print materials - or websites - can leave people with little faith about your company.

Since fonts are a big part of this chapter, check out this link. It contains helpful information on typography and design in the form of infographics - and as much as I love words, I definitely appreciate the not-wordy-get-to-the-point-plus-!pictures! awesomeness of infographics. (Web Authoring students: Notice how some of the principles we learned in class are included, like how the eye travels across a page.)

Web Content Organization and Fonts

Most of Kilian's third chapter in Writing for the Web is overly-worded common sense. There are, however, a few important points and at least one thing I disagree with him about.

Having each page of your website be able to stand alone is important, especially if you have a variety of content. Google will send your reader only to the page about whatsits and the majority of them will be totally unable to navigate their way back to your homepage. It also helps people who did come in through the homepage, but have forgotten some important thing about you and don't want to back up. Finally, it helps you with one of the most important things about writing for the web and writing in all forms: continuity. People need cues, and stuff needs to look familiar.

I know some people think pointing this out is a joke - now that blogging software makes the layout for you and prompts you to put in your About Me and your Navigation and your Links. When frames were the big thing, people got stuck in them or missed the navigation or missed the content pages. When Iframes were the big thing, people would get your individual web pages without the navigation sections.  Sure, it's no big deal for me to go to the top of my address bar and take out the individual page file name and hit enter, but people new to the Internet aren't going to get that - and you shouldn't expect them to. People don't have to stay on your page, and if you make it difficult, they just won't.

On page 44, Kilian says, "You should be generating your webtext in whatever font and size are comfortable for you."

No. No, you shouldn't. You should do some research first, and see what looks good, and see what people hate. Sure, it sounds like common sense. But do you know how many horrible web pages with bright blue Comic Sans there are out there? Old English? Papyrus? Kristin? Your font for the body of your webtext should be a simple, easy-to-read font that does not detract from the message in your text. Try invisible fonts like Verdana, Arial, Times, Tahoma, Georgia, Helvetica - anything that isn't overly embellished. Check out this humorous article from Cracked (note: some language, and I don't agree with everything said here) and this more serious font article; if you got IPFW's English Department newsletter last semester, there's also an article about fonts there (by yours truly).