At An Event Apart in Atlanta GA 2014, Jenn Lukas outlined how Web developers can work with Web type. Here's my notes from her talk The Developer’s Ampersandwich:
- Help developers understand design intentions not just specs.
- Developers love formulas and rules. When it comes to Web type, we had a lot of rules. Web-safe fonts determined what we could use on our pages.
- Web fonts repositories publish top fonts in use -can we learn from what people are using the most?
- Use style guides, pattern libraries, and general styles to ensure no type goes un-styled.
- A heading audit is a listing of all the heading classes on a site (its likely you will have more than 6). This illustrates all the type options people have.
- Web fonts ave changed everything (for the better). We don't have to cut image headlines anymore.
- But Web fonts have some cross-browser issues. Set time and budget aside for QA testing.
- When choosing Web fonts, look at your analytics to see what your audience is using. Make sure things render well on the platforms your audience uses it.
- Make sure your fonts will work for your audience before design approval.
- Use an HTML test page instead of a Photoshop comp to share how fonts will look on a page. Things will be different between them.
- Use -webkit-font-smoothing:antialiased cautiously. You don't need to set across all your pages but perhaps on light text on top dark colors.
- “Fixing” a problem in one browser can make it more different than other browsers.
- You should be testing in your least favorite browser.
- Monitor how Web fonts impact your page speed. Font-face performance can be slow especially on mobile.
- Don't use all the fonts. Google and Typekit both warn when you add too many fonts to a single Web site.
- Google Fonts asks you to use less than 160k, Typekit says 400kb.
- If you are self-hosting fonts, you can use mobile-first defaults to only load styled fonts on more capable browsers.
- What fonts are available on mobile devices? Check out this chart.
- Typekit allows you remove support on mobile devices in your kits which cuts down on file size a lot.
- Icon fonts are like wingdings on steroids. Implementing them is very similar to using to Web fonts. Icon fonts prevent you from having to cut image sprites.
- Icon fonts are great for retina displays as they are vector art.
- There are a lot of icon fonts to choose from. Research the tools you're using before committing to it: is it actively being updated?
- IcoMoon allows you to use their fonts, add your own, or combine them together.
- Use aria rules for screen readers to make icon fonts to actual letters or make them to private use so they don't get read by screen readers.
- Contrast should be 4.5:1 to make fonts readable. We might be able to use media queries to support adjusting contrast in situations like low-light.
- Line lengths on the Web should be capped at 45 to 75 characters.
- Typecast allows you to create type styles in the browser that can quickly be added to a live site.
- Plan your designs and text for variable content. Identify pain points for your team to overcome them.
- Don't forget to update your font services often as they continue to upgrade and improve.
- Limit your font sizes & create a system. It's never too late to audit and review your font systems to cut down on excessive styles. This helps with performance and ongoing maintenance.
- Type-o-matic counts all the fonts on a page and orders them by color and size.
- Use CSS to affect legibility. The invert filter can swap colors fro higher contrast. Or blur to remove focus on less important text.
- QA, don't design in the browser.