Very interesting read ! Thanks a lot.
Right now, I'm trying to learn a few things about webdesign, and I have spent some time on typography yet. However, I know a few basics now, a few things about typography history, but I have never been able to find tutorials about the "why should I use this typeface or this other one there". It's like everybody is able to speak about typography theory but not about practice and thinking.
Someone knows where I can find other articles about practice ? Thanks !
I really wish I could learn to analyze typefaces better, like the author. When evaluating a typeface for my projects, I usually just eyeball it, never spending more than a few minutes. I hadn't really thought of thinking about the target audience instead of just a font that simply matches the design.
There are some great tips in there that I imagine would help one pick a fitting typeface for most projects.
All that time, thought and work and they ended up choosing Freight Micro?
http://www.cucumbertown.com/craft/wp-content/uploads/2013/10...
Look at that 'a' and the 's' (among other assorted ugliness)... ugh!
Nice read, but I'm left with some questions. Thisis a website where one can find recepies and read those with the instructions while you're cooking if I'm correct. If so, I'd love to hear if the author actually studied some users in their kitchen while cooking a new recipe and using these new fonts.
Typefaces are meaningless.
Now that I have your attention I'll blow your mind: A good typeface on a bad site does nothing but polish the turd. Designers that obsess over typefaces also generally give equal care to spacing and layout that when all put together makes for a great site.
Flipboard would never have chosen Comic Sans as a font and people that pushed Helvetica Neue would never use dancing chipmunk gifs in their layout.
Why can't you just A/B test 50 different typefaces and measure which one best produces the user behavior that you're after?
Take the subjectivity out of it.
Interesting read, but I still think that people spend faaaaaaaar too much time thinking about typefaces. I just don't think they make as much of an impact on the page as people think they do.
At first glance, I thought the "elite" and "subtle" were both the same face, and likewise with the "informal"/"playful". It's only because they were blown up to a large size that I actually started noticing a tiny difference. Maybe it's just me?
To me, the overall layout of the page is far more important. eg. margins, font-size, line-height, paragraph width, etc.
The exception to my rule, that I might spend more time on, is for big newspaper style headlines. Those I treat more like images/artwork than like text, so they get commensurately more attention devoted to them.