Even though I am on vacation with my family this week, I felt the urge to redesign this blog. Despite all-day activities including biking, arcading, babysitting, and swimming, I stayed up into the wee hours to work on this blog after the kids passed out.
For this version, I wanted to experiment with variable font using one typeface for everything. I also would like to return to a modern design with type and grid. I started off with Adapter Variable by Rosetta Type. AV is an excellent type system that can handle expressive heading to readable text within one file. I highly recommend AV for commercial sites, but I can’t afford 690 € ($780) for my personal blog. As a result, I had to find an alternative variable font with Vietnamese support. I chose IBM Plex Sans Variable, designed by Mike Abbink and in collaboration with Bold Monday, because I had already used its sibling Plex Mono for code highlighting in the previous version of this site.
After some readjustments from Adapter to Plex, I loved the new typesetting just as much. The only minor drawback is that Plex Sans Variable has a separate file for roman and italics instead of combining into one. On the plus side, Plex Sans works out well with Plex Mono. For the mobile version, I set the width of the text narrower to accommodate more words. For large screens, I set the width a bit wider. For headers, I narrow the width and the bold the weight.
I also kept the dark mode from the previous version. If you are reading this post through an RSS reader, please visit the site to see the new design.
