#157 - Make me think
Hey everyone,
Welcome to issue #157, your weekly roundup of what’s happening in design, code and typography.
Thought provoking #
“Websites, the Cloud, the Internet. They sound harmlessly non-physical; but digital communications, devices and lifestyle choices gobble up real resources. Gerry McGovern makes the case for why we need to curb our digital addiction before we drag our planet into the trash bin.” Brian Louis Ramirez in Review: ‘World Wide Waste’ by Gerry McGovern.
“The removal of all friction should’t be a goal. Making things easy and making things hard should be a design tool, employed to aid the end user towards their loftiest goals. Instead of always chasing the erasure of friction, it’s worth thinking about how friction can help people.“ Jim Nielsen in Make me think.
Design and Code #
Ahmad Shadeed covers some interesting challenges when Building Website Headers with CSS Flexbox.
Don’t draw the UI, draw the priority. Great advice given to Robin Rendle when he was struggling with a design.
Styling Complex Labels. Sometimes labels for form fields are short and to the point. But other times, it’s helpful to provide users with more detailed information. Danielle Romo shows how to utilise the span element to create flexible label designs which are still accessible.
Custom bullets with CSS ::marker. It is now trivial to customize the color, size or type of number or bullet when using a <ul> or <ol>. Adam Argyle and Oriol Brufau show what’s possible.
Typography #
Improving the Typography of the iOS time display. Oliver Schöndorfer switches proportional figures for tabular figures and suggests how the inclusion of an alternate character might improve spacing.
Tongari by Émilie Rigaud is a type family of seven weights and their seven italics. Tongari is a japanese word for “sharp-pointed”. Sharp-pointed, as the swords of the seven samurai in the Akira Kurosawa movie, in which a bunch of warriors defend a village from thieves. Seven weights for seven samurai.
Choosing typography for web design: 5 things you need to consider from Renee Fleck.
The Irvington Theater Brand Identity employs 52 display typefaces by Pyte Type Foundry. Each typeface is based on vintage wooden type, a nod to the rich history of wheatpaste posters that littered the walls of cities in the Nineteenth century.
Highgate from Dalton Maag is a sans serif font family which draws its inspiration from traditional British stone carving.
Something to watch #
UI Tutorial: Redesigning the Almanack of Naval. Erik Kennedy redesigns two screens from Eric Jorgensen’s website for his book Navalmanack.com. The video covers typography, brand, design inspiration, and more.