Typography Geekout

After weeks of studying anchoring, proper strand linkages, message threads, and effective stickiness, a proud young spider had recently completed his first web. Within the web, using the language of flies and beetles, he wove "Free Poop, All You Can Eat" just as his mother taught him.

Though it was a magnificently sturdy affair, a testament to standards-based web construction, it was not catching any flies. The flies would approach, but then turn away and laugh derisively before they could be caught. The spider pored over his engineering notes, sifted through his data, and consulted his RFCs, but he could not figure out what he'd done wrong.

Frustrated, he set out to consult with his old teacher, master Orb Weaver for advice. "Master, I followed all of the rules set out by the World Wide Web construction industry, but I cannot attract any flies? What have I overlooked?"

"Webbling, though your strands are steadfastly anchored to the foundation and are interwoven with precision, you have made a critical mistake. True, you have written an enticing message within your web, but the form of the lettering is well known to your victims. The flies easily recognize your trap and so they pass you by," the master explained.

"But master, my mother swore by Comic Sans as the most friendly and inviting font. What else could I could possibly use?"

"Your foundation is good, but you still have much to learn about making good webs."

Web design has been saddled with a few crusty fonts for decades, but you don't have to be like the young spider of this newly ancient parable. You don't have to settle for Mom's font any more!

Join us at the GRWebDev Typography Geekout to learn how and when to use young, exciting, modern fonts on your web sites. There are even fonts for those of you making boring, stodgy sites! We'll talk about ligatures, kerning, terminals, and all manner of other fontish things. What's the difference between a font and a typeface? I have no idea, but I bet one of our presenters does!

We have 3 presentations for this meetup:

Karl Swedberg/Tim Kelty: An in depth look @ @font-face and using unicode fonts instead of images.

Victor Sirotek: Practical advice on how to make type work for you. This will touch on type sizing, do's/dont's, very basic grid advice, readability of your work, etc.

Taylor Vanden Hoek: An in depth intro to type. I'll cover things like type anatomy, history of type, how to use multiple fonts in design, what/where to look for good type.