February 26, 2008
Cardiff is finally getting its act together. Tonight, I’ll be speaking at the second Cardiff Geek Night, along with Dan Zambonini. It’s a ‘microslot’ that will last about 15 minutes, leaving plenty of time for questions.
When I spoke in November last year at the Web 2.0 Expo in Berlin, the feedback I got from my Typography presentation was generally positive. It seemed that most of the people I spoke to preferred the last 10 minutes, on Micro-Typography, and all the quick tips that you could use every day. Tonight will be more of the same, with a slightly different slant. I’m going to highlighting my top ten crimes against web typography, and how you can put them right. Ten crimes (and subsequent tips on correcting them) in ten minutes. I’m told the talks will both be recorded, so I’ll post up a link to them (and slides), when they’re all done.
If you’re at a loose end tonight, and fancy a pint, then feel free to come along. We’ll be at Cafe Floyd from 7pm.
November 07, 2007
Since Sunday evening, I’ve been in Berlin attending—and speaking at—the Web 2.0 Expo. I presented earlier today on the very ‘un-web 2.0’ topic of Typography. I think it may have surprised a few people as to how relevant typography is to designing UI—even to applications. As usual, I talked about type as being more than just choosing typefaces, which is where most designers, unfortunately, see typography begin and end.
On closing, I gave a URL which would link to a section of this site with the slides, notes etc. You can download the slides here.
Apologies for the delay, but the up-speed of the conference wifi was incredibly poor, so I’ve only just got around to doing it.
I’ve also decided to embed the slides here from Slideshare. I don’t normally do this, so apologies if Slideshare clogs things up, but I thought it might be nice to have the slides here whilst I break-down the topics I presented.
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June 15, 2007
There has been a lot said recently about Vertical Rhythm. Richard Rutter began the work on 24ways last year with the piece ‘Compose to a Vertical Rhythm’. This was built upon by Wilson Minor on A List Apart recently with his article on Baseline Grids. All sound typographic advice. If you haven’t read both of them, I’d urge you to do so now otherwise you know what I’m on about it in this post.
At @media this year, I presented ‘Five Simple Steps to Better Typography’. Step two in my presentation was was Vertical Rhythm where I reiterated some of the excellent points Richard made in his article and also the presentation we both gave in at SXSW in March. I also added something of my own: Incremental leading, or Incremental line-height.
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June 11, 2007
That’s @media done for another year. Patrick put on a great event. Again. Seriously, year on year the bar is raised and he delivers. The speakers were great, the venue, the food, but most of all the location; Islington is such a great place for an event like this.
I feel like I’ve lived with @media 07 for a while. I produced the conference printed matter for San Fransisco and London, so for the best part of a month I’ve felt the looming pressure of speaking. I was very nervous about it, but I think it went ok.
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March 21, 2006
Are you in Perth, Australia on the 11th April?
If so, and you fancy an evening of listening to myself and John Allsopp talk about web and type stuff, then pop along to Ideas3 hosted by Port80 at the Melbourne Hotel in the centre of Perth at 7pm. You can get your tickets here.
February 06, 2006
In this installment I'll be talking about three dashes which are often used, but frequently misused. The Hyphen, the En Dash and the Em Dash.
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January 26, 2006
Typography, as discussed in the introduction to this series, is comprised of many constituent parts, one of which is Typesetting. As already discussed, Typesetting is the composition of a body of text from raw material into a designed presentation. One of the aspects of Typesetting which seems to be lacking in the design profession—and I'm guilty as this as the next designer—is that of a thorough understanding of the written word. A total grasp of punctuation, grammar and structure and when and where to use them.
A good Typesetter should really know the language in which they are composing.
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December 16, 2005
'Gill Sans, is he mad?', I hear you cry.
Well, Gill Sans - as well as Helvetica - are perhaps the two typefaces I use the most. I have a love / hate relationship with them both, or rather with particular weights of both, but they are two typefaces which continue to surprise me with their beauty and versatility.
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I'm a graphic designer from near Cardiff in the UK. I've been a designer for over ten years now and primarily work on the web. I'm still partial to a bit of print every now and then though. I used to work for