Highlights from Mark Boulton’s presentation at FOWD London 2009

Mark Boulton was one of the speakers at this years’ conference Future Of Web Design (FOWD) in London. His presentation ‘Typography’s not on the Web, it IS the Web’ was the highlight of the day! It was very well prepared and very informative talk on the state of typography today.

Here are the following highlights:

1. What is typography?

Typography is a language on the web. It conveys information in writing. A lot of data on the web is information. Language is information, therefore typography is a language.

2. Designers role

Authors have a conceptual model of what they write. Readers have their own conceptual model of how the information should be presented. It is designers’ job to interpret authors’ information. Understanding of the brand values and knowing the audience will help designers to bridge the gap between the authors’ and readers’ conceptual structure.

Photo by Vectorfunk

3. Typography is information design

Typography goes much deeper than just making things look pretty. It IS information design. A lot of typographic design is involved in splitting up and structuring the information. Typography is about conveying the information in the best way.

4. Everybody can be a designer

Not just qualified designers but everyone has the ability to be a designer with the tools that are available nowadays. People create newsletters, write blogs, use content management systems to create their websites, etc. These ‘amateur designers’ face a choice dilemma. They make bad design decisions because the tools that are available make it easy for them to make bad design decisions.

Drupal.org is a good example of how to make bad design decisions. It is a content management system that Mark is currently working on to improve the user experience. 6 out of 7 sites created in Drupal are ugly! And that’s because the tools that are given to people make it hard to make the site look beautiful, i.e. users are left with the choice of 82 fonts (most of the fonts are not right for the job, i.e. Comic Sans). It would help users to make the right decision if the number of fonts was reduced and if they were given with the choice of two good fonts like Georgia and Helvetica instead.

Photo by Vectorfunk

5. Examples of bad typographical choices

Typefaces are designed for a reason. 99% of typefaces have been designed for print.

Comic Sans – 9 out of 10 times is a wrong tool for the job. It’s often used out of contexts and that’s because tools that are available for everybody make it easy for people to make bad design decisions.

Meta Sans – is not a great font for the web. It never was designed for the web. It was designed to be used by German post office in print (i.e. postage stamps)

Times New Roman – designed for print. Looks good on the web only in large size. Serifs are sharp and small, on screen become almost invisible in small sizes.

So why not use Georgia instead? It was designed for web. Has got big, fat serifs that look good in small sizes as they don’t vanish.

Web typography is limited, and we have to think hard before we make the right decision. While it might be easy job for designers it isn’t necessarily easy for the users. Our role as designers is to help users make good design decisions. We have to hold them by hand!

It is also useful to go back to the fundamentals of good typography and raise the awareness among those who don’t know them.