Filled to the last chair: Jason Pamental’s responsive typography workshop, photo: Sebastian Weiß (Monotype)Like many young, budding designers, Typography and I got off to a rocky start. Not understanding the difference between readability and legibility, I drove myself crazy until Type wanted to be my friend as badly as I wanted to be Type’s.
When it came to the Web, we got on like a house on fire and our loving relationship continues to this day. It’s a platform, a tool, a resource and well let’s be real, a place for all your crazy housemate’s cat videos. We’ve all had one. The internet is a big place, and while some areas are very familiar, there is also a dark void of things I personally don’t understand.
The workshop covered many aspects of web typography, including how ligatures make a difference …
But what about the relationship between Type and Web? One-on-one equals two as company, but then there is the user … is three a crowd?
Jason Pamental aimed to address the connections within this triad, problem solving ways to turn good website experiences into great ones.
The workshop covered topics like performance, screen scaling, styling tricks and how nailing the basic primitive of the design is the best way to create layouts from the content out. Starting designs by properly defining the humble <p> will likely save future you a lot of pain and frustration. Jason took the group through each of these with structured examples and clear explanation. As a non-coder I certainly appreciated his clear thought process and colloquial references to ‘dropping it like a drop cap’ and ‘linking it, linking it real good’.
Original recorder magazine used as an example on how to transform a printed layout into the corresponding web layout With over 50% of interaction being on a mobile devices, responsible web typography is more important than ever as that number continues to increase. Jason’s workshop was a lovely balance between form and function, advocating for a smarter and simultaneously more beautiful online experience. After all, if Typography is “the clothes which words wear”, we can’t leave the Web naked now, can we?
LINKS:
→ Responsive Typography: workshop homepage with slides and resources.
→ GitHub: Source code from Responsive Typography workshop at TYPO Berlin.
→ The Recorder online version: Responsive website where web fonts and corrections can be switched on and off.
Jason Pamental
Designer, Strategist, Web Typographer, and Tinkerer (USA)
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