Typography

Web Fonts: The Experts Speak

Imagine you could design a Web site using typefaces beyond the boring usual system font choices and be sure viewers would see what you intended.

A Question of Character: Finding What You Need in Your Fonts, Part 2

Everything you wanted to know about Unicode but didn’t know whom to ask. Bonus: A cheat sheet for instantly creating such characters as fractions; up and down arrows; and open and filled circles and squares.

TypeTalk: Distorting Type

Are you tempted to stretch or squeeze letters, perhaps to make a headline or subhead fit better? Don't do it!

Use Real Fonts on Web Sites

Typekit bills itself as the "easiest way to use real fonts on the web." It's now out of beta and open to everyone.

Type Luminaries Speak on PRI

Jonathan Hoefler, Tobias Frere-Jones, Matthew Carter, and Tracy Honn discuss typefaces past and present in a recent episode of "To the Best of Our Knowledge." Thanks to the Internet, you can listen to it right now!

TypeTalk: Find Figure Styles in OpenType Fonts

To designers' delight, many typefaces include several kinds of numbers: oldstyle, lining, tabular, and proportional. But how do you discover which fonts have which styles?

A Question of Character: Finding What You Need in Your Fonts, Part 1

As fonts get larger, finding the characters you need keeps getting more complicated. Here's a chart that gives keyboard shortcuts for the degree symbol, multiplication sign, the cents sign, and much more.

19 Top Combos of the 19 Top Typefaces

Would you pair Helvetica with Garamond? What about Minion with Gill Sans or FF Din with Baskerville? Check out the list and let us know what you think!

TypeTalk: Times Roman vs Times New Roman

What's old, what's new, and what's what when you're talking about Times?

One Good Kern Deserves Another

Evening out the spaces between characters is a matter of finding the right rhythm, then going with the flow.

Antique Gothic Grotesque: Deciphering the Typeface Name Game

The vocabulary of type is mysterious at best, and nowhere is this more true than in how typefaces are labeled. Yet knowing how typefaces are named and categorized has very practical benefits.

TypeTalk: Best Headline Breaks

When headline and subheads are more than one line long, grab the reins and make those breaks manually. Here's what to look for.

Multi Style II XT for QuarkXPress 8 Now Available

This Mac-only software lets you auto-apply complex typography with a single click.

To Boldly Go . . . Or Is It Italically?

In any family, you can always spot the role of certain members. Typeface families are no different.

Kern. In. Spaaaaaaaaace!

On earth you kern with the best of them. But how well do your skills hold up in a fraction of earth's gravity? Check the gauges, fire the boosters, and do your best to give 80-point type a 3-point landing.

New Typographical and Illustrative Treasures from House Industries

House Industries introduces 27 hand-printed serigraphs, photo-lettering alphabet blocks, four new tees, and a new one-liner catalog.

TypeTalk: Point Size and Letter Spacing

When you make type bigger or smaller, don't forget to adjust the letter spacing, too. The result will be more evenly colored text.

Punc Rocks: The Typographer's Guide to Punctuation

When it comes to understanding what we read, periods, commas, and their dotty allies are proof that it's the little things that count. Here's how to use them correctly.

Get "Real" Baseline Grids on the Web

Built with typographic standards in mind, Baseline makes it easy to develop a website with a pleasing grid and good typography. And it's free!

TypeTalk: InterroBANG

Both a question mark and an exclamation mark, the interrobang is hard-working punctuation.