Visualgui 2019 Iteration 3: Plexibility

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.

Beacon of HOV