I wish I’d known of this website earlier, when I was thrown into designing magazines and newspapers for group projects in my previous school without any proper ‘education’ on the do’s and don’ts. Heck, we weren’t even taught how to use InDesign!

First of all, I like that this website literally puts all of the basics that you need to know about type right there, all in one page, so that it’s easy to make comparisons and/or look back when you forget what something means. Like a typography bible of sorts.

While the super analytical portions of the site that recaps most of the information we’ve covered in class really helps me refresh my memory and see very distinctly what they mean, I really appreciate the use of different fonts and typefaces (as well as stating their names) to demonstrate concepts and make comparisons.

This, for example, really shows the differences between typefaces within a font, to understand the adjustments made specifically to the letters, that it’s not just simply making a font look “thicker” for a “bold” typeface, and that italicising =/= slanting.

I especially appreciate this portion of mixing typefaces, where actual fonts are put side by side for a real comparison so that we can easily see the good and the bad of mixes. Stating the fonts also provide a good ‘fall back’ option of what fonts I could possibly consider in the future should I face any difficulty with finding fonts to use, although I would of course source for better paired fonts first.

 

I’d also like to believe that I had managed to pick up on some of the do’s of mixing typefaces in the past, as I observe some similarities between this extract as well as one from an old newspaper design. PLEASE FORGIVE ANY ELEMENTS THAT MAKE YOUR EYES BLEED, I HAD 0 EXPERIENCE WITH DESIGN (ESPECIALLY, TYPOGRAPHY) AND I CAN ALREADY SEE MANY HORRIFYING MISTAKES MADE IN THE SCREENSHOT BELOW. Still, I think my font choices weren’t all too bad for a beginner.

Now with this website and this class, I hope I’ll be able to make even more beautiful designs with beautiful typography.