I watch the ripples change their size
But never leave the stream
Of warm impermanence
And so the days float through my eyes
But still the days seem the same
And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to your consultations
They're quite aware of what they're goin' through

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

How we see type

Some of you have heard me rambling on about how we actually read and see type (and if you haven't consider yourself lucky).

Here's a little primer which explains a lot of it and includes some good tips and rules of thumb. The page I linked to from this (on the same site) has some interesting manuscript layout tips which aren't "universal" so I'll stay away from that.

But, look there. See, I'm not so crazy as you thought. Also, this is definitely based on US preferences. It changes a little from country to country (like our preference to see type with serifs in the US, but in Europe they prefer sans-serifs).

A shout out to Astrid who sent me the original link.

4 comments:

Dr. Phil (Physics) said...

Well, duh!

When I've put stories up on my website, I restrict the width they can have. For exactly these reasons.

Dr. Phil

Steve Buchheit said...

You'd be surprised at how many don't know the basic functions of reading. Even people in my own profession. I can't tell you how many times I've had the conversation of "I don't if they can open the browser window all this way and there's big "white space" on the borders vs the text should expand so the end user can see more.

Todd Wheeler said...

Cool link. Thanks!

I find line height usually very cramped on screen. I should revisit the CSS on my own site regarding that. My recollection is that it's tricky to get right.

Steve Buchheit said...

Hey Todd, yep, CSS is still very tricky, even all these years down the road.