comm207fall06

Your assignment for next week: Learn about type. Here's a link to a good website. It concentrates on the internet, but I guess that makes sense ... that's where I found it, the internt. I'll post others as I find them. -- pe

Typography for the World Wide Web follows the same basic principles but modifies them for webpages. For a good introduction, study the Web Style Guide (2d ed.) by Patrick Lynch and Sarah Horton. You'll find links from the start page to discussions of type, page design and other things you need to know in order to go on line. Surf around the pages about typography, page design and the differences between dead-tree (paper) and web-based design principles. But especially read up on type.

"Typography," say Lynch and Horton, "plays a dual role as both verbal and visual communication. As readers scan a page they are subconsciously aware of both functions: first they survey the overall graphic patterns of the page, then they parse the language, or read. Good typography establishes a visual hierarchy for rendering prose on the page by providing visual punctuation and graphic accents that help readers understand relations between prose and pictures, headlines and subordinate blocks of text."