Usability First!

I just woke up one day with the urge to understand Type and Typography. I thought it was all about knowing the difference between Serif and Sans-Serif fonts, but I was way mistaken.

I then began my journey into type and typography, and have since (and continue to be) enlightened. I began bookmarking and tweeting some of the resources, but then decided that this topic deserves a post of it’s own. I’ve tried to keep the resource list small, and have gone for impact over volume of resources. Do look at the comments/links within the resources to learn more, as crowd-sourcing can do wonders!

Books:

• Visual Grammar by Christian Leborg
• Stop Stealing Sheep & Find Out How Type Works by Erik Spiekermann
• Thinking with Type by Ellen Lupton
• The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst
• About Face: Reviving The Rules Of Typography by David Jury
• Type: The Secret History of Letters by Simon Loxley

Blog Posts/Articles:

• A brief introduction to typography by Norman Walsh: As the title says, it’s brief, but interesting. Talks about the history of Times, Helvetica and some other fonts.
• Which are more legible: Serif or Sans Serif Typefaces by Alex Pool: Talks not only about his point of view on the matter, but also provides references and points of research on typefaces.
• CSS Typography by Garrett Dimon: A good started on applying typographic principles to websites using CSS, and what CSS hooks are available to the designer.
• The Ultimate Guide to CSS Typography by Shane Jeffers: Yet another detailed resource on how CSS can be used to control type and allow for good typography on websites.
• Thinking with Type by Ellen Lupton: This is the website companion to the book of the same name. It is a huge storehouse of information on every aspect of typography. Beware, this site will keep you busy for a long time.
• Brief introduction to typography: This is more of an introduction to the technical terms around typography. A handy reference.
• A 20 minute introduction to typography: A rehash of what’s above, but explained well.
• Effects of whitespace on readability: A very interesting and informative read on how line space (leading) and margins affect readability.

Online tools to help with Typography:

• 50 Useful Design Tools For Beautiful Web Typography by Smashing Magazine: Covers a truckload of resources for typography, from tools to information resources to whatnot.
• Best Practices of Combining Typefaces by Smashing Magazine: Has a wealth of information as well as great similar resources at the bottom.
• Text Sizing by Owen Briggs: While technically not a tool, this is a goldmine of screenshots of different browsers rendering the same text to help us compare sizes. Don’t miss the typography tutorial link at the end of the linked page.
• Type Tester: A very useful tool that allows you to compare fonts while also tweaking their typographic properties.

If I’ve missed any awesome resources or have holes in my collection, please write in a comment and let me (and others who visit) know!