To be honest, typography scares me. I mean, it looks great and I understand why it is important and that you can do many things with typography to make your text interesting. But books on typography seem to enjoy highlighting the numerous ways people use typography poorly or focus on overused and reviled typefaces but rarely explain why (but I like Papyrus…). It is enough to cause me much anxiety. I don’t know enough to avoid the mistakes and end up feeling that it is all rather arbitrary.

Left brain.

However I will attempt to understand this strange new world and will attempt to experiment with type in my next assignments. Just please don’t laugh too loudly at my gaffs.

I do know that the project I will be working on will require a more traditional typography, something that invokes religious copy from the 18th and 19th centuries. I would also, however, like add some tension and flair by adding some more modern layout elements, something to avoid being overly cliche and to add some visual interest to the site.

Another helpful resource for design, particularly if anyone else is painfully analytical and lacking in design sense, is Design for Hackers by David Kadavy. It explains why Comic Sans is a problematic font and assumes that design is not your first language. Very helpful for the anxious analytic brain.

Also, the final section in Thinking with Type discussed grids but was very vague about the application of grids to the web. I am interested in experimenting with a grid system for web-design. I have looked at blueprint and the 960 grid system and am leaning toward the 960 grid system. Is anyone interested in experimenting with me?

 

/* Addendium: I posted on Geoff’s blog */