Simon Willison’s Weblog

Amstelvar (via) A real showcase of what variable fonts can do: this open source font by David Berlow has 17 different variables controlling many different aspects of the font.

# 17th November 2020, 3:24 pm / typography, fonts

CoronaFaceImpact (via) Variable fonts are fonts that can be customized by passing in additional parameters, which is done in CSS using the font-variation-settings property. Here’s a ​variable font that shows multiple effects of Covid-19 lockdown on a bearded face, created by Friedrich Althausen.

# 15th November 2020, 10:41 pm / css, fonts, covid19, typography

Why Google invested in providing Google Fonts for free. Fascinating comment from former Google Fonts team member Raph Levien. In short: text rendered as PNGs hurt Google Search, fonts were a delay in the transition from Flash, Google Docs needed them to better compete with Office and anything that helps create better ads is easy to find funding for.

# 23rd February 2020, 2:13 pm / typography, google

Surfin’ Safari: Announcing... MathML! MathML is now supported by the WebKit nightlies. Worth checking out for the typographical discussion that’s broken out in the comments.

# 18th August 2010, 1:49 pm / mathml, safari, typography, webkit, recovered

Newzald: From Moleskine to Market. A typeface designer describes the process involved in designing a new font and taking it to market.

# 31st December 2009, 9:24 am / typography, design, newzald

cufon. A promising alternative to sIFR, cufon uses VML on IE and canvas on other browsers to render custom fonts in the browser. You have to convert your font to JavaScript first, either using their free hosted tool or by installing the FontForge based server-side script yourself. The JavaScript encoded font file uses VML primitives to improve IE performance; the JavaScript library converts that to canvas calls for other, faster browsers.

# 6th April 2009, 10:29 pm / cufon, browsers, fonts, vml, ie, fontforge, sifr, typography, canvas, javascript

Facing up to Fonts. Slides and notes from Richard Rutter’s excellent typography presentation at a recent SkillSwap Brighton. Includes some new thinking about the font stack (comma separated list of fonts provided to the font-family property) you should use to get the best possible implementation of a given font on various different platforms.

# 9th February 2009, 9:16 pm / fontstacks, richard-rutter, skillswap, skillswapbrighton, fonts, typography, design

typeface.js. Outstanding hack—renders custom fonts using VML in IE and canvas in everything else, using fonts that are defined as a set of vector paths stored using JSON.

# 27th October 2008, 11:45 pm / fonts, typefacejs, canvas, javascript, json, vml, typography

Comic Sans, the Film. “A documentary film coming soon”

# 21st June 2008, 12:27 am / funny, comicsans, typography

Idea: A new typography term (via) keming. noun. The result of improper kerning.

# 22nd March 2008, 1:41 pm / keming, typography, funny

LJWorld.com: Kansas Democratic Presidential Caucuses (via) The most beautiful election results page I’ve ever seen. Love the typography and the Google Charts integration.

# 8th February 2008, 11:17 am / matt-croydon, design, elections, kansas, ljworld, google-charts, typography

Harry Potter and the Order of Typography. Jon Hicks highlights some of the beautiful typography displayed by the latest Harry Potter film.

# 18th November 2007, 11:18 am / harrypotter, design, typography, film, jon-hicks

typogrify (via) “Typogrify is a collection of Django template filters that to help prettify your web typography by preventing ugly quotes and widows and providing CSS hooks to style some special cases.”

# 29th May 2007, 7:38 pm / typography, django, jeff-croft, templatefilters, christian-metts

Setting Type on the Web to a Baseline Grid. Wilson Miner introduces a smart, methodical approach to well proportioned Web typography.

# 11th April 2007, 12:08 am / wilson-miner, typography, a-list-apart, css

“Obsessed with putting ink on paper” (via) Fascinating essay from the authors of Lilypond describing the challenges involved in writing software to typeset music.

# 30th March 2007, 3:04 pm / typography, music, lilypond