Responsive Typography: Using Type Well on the Web

Responsive web design helps your site maintain its design integrity on a variety of screen sizes, but how does it affect your typography? With this practical book, graphic designers, web designers, and front-end developers alike will learn the nuts and bolts of implementing web fonts well, especially how to get the best appearance from type without sacrificing performance on any device. After examining typography fundamentals and the evolution of type on the Web, author Jason Pamental provides useful approaches, real examples, code, and advice for making your type performant, progressive, proportional, and polished—the primary ingredients of responsive typography.

• Understand how type plays a vital role in content-first web design
• Weigh the tradeoffs between self-hosting and using a font service to get the best performance for your site
• Get your type on the screen fast by designing for Progressive Enhancement
• Use a responsive relative scale to adjust proportions between typographic elements for any device or resolution
• Polish your type with ligatures, kerning, and other techniques to create rich, textured reading experiences

Table of Contents

Part I. A Bit of Backstory
Chapter 1. On the Merits of Letters
Chapter 2. Progressive Progress
Chapter 3. Where Is Typography in the Design Process?

Part II. Getting Started with Web Fonts
Chapter 4. Buy or Borrow: The Designer’s Dilemma
Chapter 5. Performance: Get Fonts on Your Site, Fast
Chapter 6. Be Progressive: Font Sizing and FOUT
Chapter 7. Proportion: Make It Scale, Make It Right
Chapter 8. Polish: Finessing the Fine Points
Chapter 9. Notes, Notions, and Sending You on Your Way

Appendix A. Web Font Services
Appendix B. Responsive Typography and Web Fonts in Email