- Posted
- Mar 23rd 2007
- Mood
- Cheerful
So I'm working on a new project, primarily for a class project, but partially out of my own interest, and I'm looking to collect a few opinions as part of my research.
Basically, the assignment is to create a website on a particular subject, and I chose typography because I am a font nerd.
What I aim to do is create an informational website for people with little or no background in design, but are still interested in it. I'm going to put it together in Flash with lots of nifty animated bits to explain various concepts and techniques and so forth.
I may be totally fishing in the wrong place for ideas here, because this is an art site, but who knows. The majority of people on Sheezy are amateur artists who seem to be in the early teen-early twenties age range, which is who I want to target with the site. What I'd like to find out is this:
What do you find to be the hardest thing about using fonts or making text look good? This could be in anything at all, from a school paper to an art-related...anything. Or alternately, if you don't have that much difficulty with text, what else about design or layout would you ask questions about?
It's pretty surprising how many people have made it as far as I am in school - especially in the major I'm in - with absolutely no understanding of how to use text or why they use the typefaces they do. Good typography can make a huge difference in the way people interpret text and how readable (or unreadable, maybe intentionally
) something is. It drives me nuts to see horrible typography.
arborwin Says:
For all the free fonts floating around on the internet, people are pretty uninformed about it, and font-making software is still hella expensive. I know because I really would like to try making fonts one day, but I just can't afford the software. It doesn't even seem to be available through pirates.
Most people are allotted to the few free fonts available to them on the interweb. But I guess I have a few observations. I've found that I very seldom use "grunge" fonts I've downloaded, because usually I'm looking for something that is, at least at first, very clear and legible. If I want to "grunge" something, I will do so manually, like with Photoshop brushes or whatever. I tend to look for very clear, heavy fonts, avoiding scratchy fine ones.
I don't really have much experience with typography, so I'm not sure if I can competently answer your question.
I've found that over time I've also used less and less serif fonts. I used to be very fond of New York or Palatino back in the 90s when fonts were still pixellated everywhere, but now most fonts on OSX are anti-aliased, and serif fonts seem to be harder to read now--finer, thinner, more difficult to see. Maybe the anti-aliasing acted to dumb things down? I dunno. It's more difficult for me to tell the difference between serif fonts now, simply because I don't see them often anymore, except say for Times, which is just tiresome at this point from over use. I still, of course, see serif fonts everywhere OFF the computer, and of course they are as legible as they ever were in print.
I'm sure this is not what you were asking for, I'm just rambling |D It just seems funny to me that with the internet, even with all the free fonts, the actual realm of useable, popular fonts really hasn't expanded that much.