Researched and written by graduate students at MICA and edited by Ellen Lupton, Type On Screen is a good overview of typography for the web, digital publishing and other screen-based technologies. With concise writing and compelling visual examples, you’ll learn a bit about the history of web fonts, hinting and designing for screen reading. The book is beautifully designed, but sadly set in chunky Akzidenz Grotesk as body text.
Miles Davis used to tell his musicians: “Don’t play what’s there. Play what’s not there.” In other word, pay attention to the space in between the notes. In similar concept, Cyrus Highsmith advises designers to look at the typographic space (such as glyph, counter, letter and line) rather than the text in a paragraph. The purpose is to understand what’s happening behind the scenes when setting body copy. It’s a great little book to have for quick reference.
In a concise but insightful guide, Jost Hochuli exams the elements of micro-typography including letters, words, lines and their spacing. His brief explanation of saccades is easy to grasp. Hochuli designed the book himself using Adobe Minion for body text and Futura Bold for headings. Needless to say, it’s a beautiful little book.
When I first read Universal Principles of Design back in 2003, I was so inspired that I retyped the principles that I thought would apply for the web. That post had been linked to quite a bit for several years. Rereading the updated version gives me a sense of how much I have learned in the past decade. Still highly recommend this book for new designers.
One of the intriguing challenges of being a designer is that you never know what type of projects come your way. How can you solve the users’ problem if you don’t know anything about the project yourself? This is where Erika Hall’s Just Enough Research comes in handy. From organizational to user to competitive to evaluative to quantitative, Hall has all your researches covered. Read it and apply it because “research can save you and the rest of your team a ton of time and effort.”
When I was an intern many years ago, I asked my mentor if I could watch him work in Photoshop. I was interested in his process. Reading Responsive Design Workflow is like seeing how Stephen Hay goes through his process. It’s fascinating and informative at once. Some of his workflows could definitely be incorporated into my own process, and yours as well.
I was searching for an approachable and comprehensive book on HTML & CSS to recommend to students and Thomas Michaud’s Foundations of Web Design fits the bill. The instructions are easy to follow. The illustrations are clear. Most important of all, the contents are up-to-date. I am also glad that Michaud included a chapter on ARIA landmark roles.
Since part of the course I will be teaching is on usability, I need to find a book for students to read. I spent the past three nights revisiting Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think and it gives me nostalgia. Most usability principles remain the same since 2000 (when the first edition of the book was published), but the third edition is updated with new screenshots and a new chapter devoted to mobile. It’s definitely worth rereading.
Jason Santa Maria thought he could write a brief book on web typography in six months and it took him a few years to finish it. The wait is worthwhile though. Jason’s knowledgable subject matter combined with his approachable writing shows that the process of working with types could be rewarding and engaging. Jason’s passion for typography is also apparent in his compelling explanations. Required reading not just for web designers.
Ruari McLean’s collection of essays in Typographers on Type read like chefs sharing their favorite recipes and cooking process. From William Morris’s “Aims in Founding the Kelmscott Press” (1895) to Matthew Carter’s “Now We Have Mutable Type” (1990), McLean has done an excellent job of assembling the pieces in chronological order, supplying short introduction for each essay, and providing useful information and development of typography in the 20th century. The book is set in FF Quadraatt, which is beautiful and easy to to read.