The personal disquiet of

Mark Boulton

February 26th, 2008

Ten Crimes Against Web Typography (and how to avoid them)

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.

14 Responses to “Ten Crimes Against Web Typography (and how to avoid them)”

  1. Graham Sanders said on: February 26th, 2008 at 4:38 am

    Look­ing for­ward to tonight Mr Boulton, albeit I’m not too sure on the name of the event.

  2. Ian Wootten said on: February 26th, 2008 at 5:38 am

    Really appre­ci­ate you tak­ing the time to do this Mark, many thanks. 

    @graham — As for the name — like it or loath it, if you speak to any­one long enough about your field who’s not in it them­selves they’ll prob­ably put you in the ste­reo­typ­ical box of “geek”. Pre­vi­ously, this might of been con­sidered derog­at­ory, but web types from every­where have been embra­cing it as their label. Short and to the point, if I say either the name of the event, or the name of our group you know what we’re on about. Now if you start call­ing me a nerd, thats a whole dif­fer­ent kettle of fish.

  3. Dio said on: February 26th, 2008 at 6:39 am

    Speak­ing of Cardiff (and how can they have a Geek night now that Andrew Wong no longer lives there?) What did you think of the excit­ing new Cardiff logo? 

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/south_east/7250149.stm

    Pretty dire?

  4. Matt Balara said on: February 26th, 2008 at 7:02 am

    Sounds great, but a little too far away from Ham­burg for me. But I’ve enjoyed look­ing through your present­a­tions on Slide­share in the past. Will you be upload­ing this one too, and will you do your fans a favour and let us know here when it’s there?

  5. Kev Mears said on: February 26th, 2008 at 2:28 pm

    Had a par­ents even­ing tonight, but I’m lik­ing this idea. Maybe I will emerge from my shell. 

    Look for­ward to one in the nice weather.

  6. simon said on: February 28th, 2008 at 7:41 am

    Too far from Lon­don too, but please post on your blog, very inter­ested to make sure I‘m not doing any crimes.

  7. Kelvin said on: February 28th, 2008 at 1:36 pm

    Unfor­tu­nately I’m not liv­ing near your place so I’m unable to attend your present­a­tion. Will you post your present­a­tion later or a pod­cast will be cool.

  8. Jim Pannell said on: March 1st, 2008 at 7:22 am

    I’m with Kelvin on that one — I’d abso­lutely love to hear / see what you presented.

  9. Heather McGee said on: March 1st, 2008 at 4:01 pm

    I don’t mean to be dis­respect­ful or to de-value the advice and teach­ings of Mr. Boulton, how­ever after hav­ing read through quite a num­ber of his

    posts, as well as the vari­ous responses to them, I’m left won­der­ing why so many design­ers are not aware of most of this inform­a­tion if they hold pos­i­tions in the field.

    I respect­fully sug­gest enrolling in a school with a reput­able graphic arts pro­gram, rather than attend­ing con­fer­ences or vis­it­ing sites such as this, to learn what has taken me and most of my peers 4 years in the classroom to become truly pro­fi­cient in.

  10. simon said on: March 3rd, 2008 at 1:57 am

    Heather — Learn­ing never stops, you only learn so much in a classroom — its like driv­ing a car you can pass your test but are you a trully good driver? I think not, 2 or 3 years down the line you are. 

    Also not every­one in here is a designer, they might just have an interest in design.

  11. web design India said on: March 5th, 2008 at 4:16 am

    I missed that show but can any­one post url or con­tent which explain this. i would really appre­ci­ate it. wait­ing for your reply

  12. elearning said on: March 5th, 2008 at 4:24 am

    nice art­icle thanks for sharing

  13. travel to london said on: March 10th, 2008 at 8:18 am

    hi , very nice post

  14. Sam Wilson said on: March 11th, 2008 at 12:31 pm

    Heather -

    I per­son­ally enjoy this blog because even if I know 9 of the 10 things being advoc­ated, it’s still nice to have that affirm­a­tion or assur­ance of things you already believe, and it’s nice to learn some­thing new now and then. Lastly, it’s great fun to read the com­ments some­times to browse peoples’ sites (you should post yours also and be a part of the party)! 

    Cheers!

    Sam

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    Hello. My name is Mark Boulton. I’m a designer, an author, a speaker and I run a small design agency where we work with lovely cli­ents and pub­lish books as we go. This is my blog.

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