Also, though it's not strictly a typographical link, I found Gregory Wood's site to be awe-inspiring in its own way. A different style and design for every post. A lot of work no doubt, but I love it: http://gregorywood.co.uk

but how is night of the living dead not a top 5 zombie film???? http://gregorywood.co.uk/journal/top-5-zombie-films

Books that may be of interest (in geographical order):

Victoria Squire: "Getting it right with type" ISBN 1-85669-474-7
Ellen Lupton: "Thinking with type, a critical guide" ISBN 1-56898-448-0
Robert Bringhurst: "The elements of typographic style" ISBN 0-88179-206-3

They treat the same subject but are different enough that no two of the make the third obsolete.
Neither book is a university text book. Regard them as introductions to typography.

/Martin

I have the Lupton book too and find it tremendously useful. I have checked the Bringhurst book out of the library multiple times (yes, the library ;) ) but should really buy it.

@benj1 - thanks for the mention. I am thinking of a blog/site redesign but haven't got around to it yet. I want to play some more with the @font-face attribute so the redesign (if I ever do it) will give me that chance I guess.

Also, though it's not strictly a typographical link, I found Gregory Wood's site to be awe-inspiring in its own way. A different style and design for every post. A lot of work no doubt, but I love it: http://gregorywood.co.uk

One of my faves: http://gregorywood.co.uk/journal/cleese-on-creativity

benj1 wrote:

are you joking, you can't even read the text.

Well, "I" can. :P
You mentioned 95% of websites are rubbish, any chance we could see an example of what you would consider part of the 5%?
(Please don't interpret my tone as snippy, I'm genuinely interested but tend to be terse.)

i don't keep track of websites i especially like the design of, although i can give examples of what i like from this thread (ps im using adblock, so some of these websites could look rubbish without it, also on a 'narrow screen' crt which could explain colour and scrolling issues)

The good:
http://www.preserve.co.nz/
Simple, everything broken up into 3 columns (past posts, content, 'social'), both non content columns reachable within a page and a half scroll, also the fact that the content is in the middle column means its centred when youve gone past all the stuff in the other columns. If I had to be picky, the page itself is overly long especially as its all images, and contact info could have been moved to the right column, making the columns more balanced, and that info belongs on the right anyway.

http://blog.rfquerin.org/
I know I'll have to be polite as he will probably read this ;) but again nice and simple, only 2 columns so you don't get the actual content squashed to one side once youre past the navigation stuff, decent amounts of white space.

http://www.ott-stein.de/
Minimalist to the point of being unhelpful (or it could be the fact I don't speak german), it also annoys me that you have to scroll to the right to see a particular image, having said that though, its all css so its sprightly enough and you don't have to load up a million and one images for one page, its not overly busy and theres nice amounts of white space too.

The Bad
http://heroku.com/how/architecture
At the moment its cloudy so i can make out the text but its not fun, I seem to be losing some stuff off the screen to the right , and from a navigation point of view, why are the page links at the top, it wouldn't be so bad if the page link at the bottom linked to the next page, but it doesn't, also each page has multiple javascript (and html) pages, so using the forward/back buttons is annoying, im not a particular fan of the colour scheme either.

I suppose its down to simplicity more than anything, its very easy to make a page busy and fill it up with extranious stuff aspecialy stuff that doesn't add anything useful, I don't think im alone either, I would argue 90% of googles sucess is down to the simplicity of the results page, if you compare it to yahoo, windows live from back in the day, having said that though, I argue a lot of things, and I'm very rarely right :P.

ive just discovered this which does basically the same.

Victoria Squire: "Getting it right with type" ISBN 1-85669-474-7
Ellen Lupton: "Thinking with type, a critical guide" ISBN 1-56898-448-0
Robert Bringhurst: "The elements of typographic style" ISBN 0-88179-206-3

They treat the same subject but are different enough that no two of the make the third obsolete.
Neither book is a university text book. Regard them as introductions to typography.

/Martin

are you joking, you can't even read the text.

Well, "I" can. :P
You mentioned 95% of websites are rubbish, any chance we could see an example of what you would consider part of the 5%?
(Please don't interpret my tone as snippy, I'm genuinely interested but tend to be terse.)

I usually use this to help reading on the web: http://readable-app.appspot.com/

Lots of "Web 2.0" sites do use a little too much css than is good for them, but some sites are pretty cool: http://heroku.com/how/architecture

are you joking, you can't even read the text.

good points, theres also the fact that graphic design is about graphics, web design 'should' primarily be about text, so typography skills turn out to be quite transferable.

i think you could probably accuse many broad sheets of cramming a lot of news in their dead tree editions, although they can still come out loking well designed.
to me i think the there are a few factors, first over use of colour and over use of 'media' is distracting,  the fact that 50% of the screen is given to navigation 'aids' and the cult of the 'home page'.
Possibly the biggest problem though is we just don't know how to work with that little browser window, an A3 newspaper contains much more news, and more tightly packed, but because you have an overview or something its managable.

/Martin

perhaps off topic, but why do typography/font websites seem to be the nicest designed, im referring primarily to personal sites where they probably do the design themselves.
95% of websites look pretty rubbish, web designer web sites tend to be overdone with movey/dropy down  css js thingys, graphics designers have, well too many graphics, and when you get in to 'art' you get the combination of both, I suppose you could say most of them (typographers) are used to setting out type etc, but why then are newspaper/magazine websites never so nice?

Well, typography and minimalism have their roots somewhat intertwined. Both design philosophies stem from the need to make the most out of negative space (the empty parts of the page/spread/canvas). That's part of the reason why these people tend to take their spacing, layout and alignment very seriously.
Another reason is the sharpness factor. Typographists/minimalists tend to concentrate on 'pure sharpness' rather than the  'contrast to give the perception of sharpness' trick that graphic designers are taught to employ.
Newspapers just try to compress as much info as possible on their page, hence layout and design, while not completely overlooked, tend to take a backseat.

I've been pursuing the area of graphic design as well over the past few years. One good source for newbies (aside from spending all your money buying good graphic design books ;) ) is the Design Guy podcast. It's focused on the concepts, not the tools and he provides short concise podcasts and complete transcriptions of each episode as well. Hasn't been updated in a while, but man I found it quite useful and interesting. I posted about it briefly a while back: http://blog.rfquerin.org/2009/10/03/tim … explained/

Thanks for that link - looks interesting and I will definitely give them a listen. Strangely, for a mostly technical person, I find I learn better visually with graphic design, but as you have such high regard I will check them out :-)

What's really odd (and totally brilliant!) is that learning about design has actually improved my coding. Somehow, getting a better aesthetic sense of things has translated into me writing more organized and focused code. It's a win/win situation!

TypoJungle
I Love Typography

After being a programming nerd most of my life I've recently been slowly but surely teaching myself graphic design from the ground up. I've been particularly drawn to typography and grid design, so it'll be great to see what people have to say here.

Good to know the importance of graphic design is not lost on all developers. I think we need a serious look at traditional graphic design concepts and skills in the FOSS world. It's an area with decades and decades of serious study behind it and yet we don't seem to take it that seriously. Of course I find much of it fascinating, but many do not. I do think it's a key element missing from much of what FOSS produces.

I've been pursuing the area of graphic design as well over the past few years. One good source for newbies (aside from spending all your money buying good graphic design books ;) ) is the Design Guy podcast. It's focused on the concepts, not the tools and he provides short concise podcasts and complete transcriptions of each episode as well. Hasn't been updated in a while, but man I found it quite useful and interesting. I posted about it briefly a while back: http://blog.rfquerin.org/2009/10/03/tim … explained/

After being a programming nerd most of my life I've recently been slowly but surely teaching myself graphic design from the ground up. I've been particularly drawn to typography and grid design, so it'll be great to see what people have to say here.

The small amount I've learned so far has improved my general web design skills immeasurably, but web technology still has a long way to go before we can get something akin to traditional typography online. For example, I can't wait until we can use ligatures!

perhaps off topic, but why do typography/font websites seem to be the nicest designed, im referring primarily to personal sites where they probably do the design themselves.
95% of websites look pretty rubbish, web designer web sites tend to be overdone with movey/dropy down  css js thingys, graphics designers have, well too many graphics, and when you get in to 'art' you get the combination of both, I suppose you could say most of them (typographers) are used to setting out type etc, but why then are newspaper/magazine websites never so nice?

Lots of "Web 2.0" sites do use a little too much css than is good for them, but some sites are pretty cool: http://heroku.com/how/architecture

I think news sites end up being driven by...news people. Every one of them HAS to have THEIR story on the home page, resulting in the monstrosities of content overload nearly every big news site is guilty of right now.

Back to topic: http://www.stefanoforenza.com/get-andro … tu-how-to/

telegrafico is nice, seems pretty close to Avantgarde, but the tops seem to weigh a bit to much here.. good one for headlines though.

If you like animated type, check out Saul Bass, and for conceptional & 3D, see Ewald Spieker from the Netherlands.

a good page with proper graphic-design: http://www.ott-stein.de