Why Garamond Doesn’t Work With the Screen You can see that it doesn’t look so good on-screen, because it’s just made up of a bunch of blocks of color. You can see here a comparison of the great classic font, Garamond, blown up (as it might look on paper), next to a detail of what it would be anti-aliased at 12px height on a modern computer screen. Even great classics like Garamond can be a disaster on the web, so its better to use a modern font that has been drawn with the screen in mind.Īnd the reason behind this is that our display technology isn’t up to par with paper. Now there are some pretty feasible ways of using whatever fonts we want – methods like SIFR, Typekit, and Google’s new Font API, but that still doesn’t mean you should use just any font. So, what makes a font bad for the web? There’s the widely-known issue of availability of fonts on the computers of our audience members – this, of course, is why we’re usually using widely-available fonts like Arial, Verdana, Georgia, Times New Roman etc. So, this makes it easy for bad habits to develop, such as trapping our information in images, or using fonts that just aren’t good for the web. Rather than only having a couple of fonts available in our typecases, there are thousands. In modern web typography, we still have the restriction that the letters of our alphabet take certain forms, but many restrictions have been removed. Does A Little Too Much Freedom = A Little Too Much Garamond?
Once actual drawing tools were a smaller part of the design equation, typographers started to get more theoretical with their designs – creating constraints of their own – fonts like Bodoni are geometrically rationalized, as they were created in a medium (cast metal) with relatively few restrictions. The lettering on the column of Trajan were brushed on, then chiseled. You can see there’s a great deal of variation in the strokes that make up the letters, and they all terminate with a soft point, just like you would expect from a brush. It was created using a brush, and this is apparent in the letterforms. This is graffiti from the ancient city of Pompeii.
Some of the best examples of early typography using roman characters are from – you guessed it – the Roman empire. This is because they were formed using a wedge-shaped stylus.Īs this language was replaced in the west by our current roman characters, and the tools which we used changed, so did the form of our letters.
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You can see, looking at these pictograms, that they are made up of a series of indentions that are pretty much identical. This cuneiform inscribed tablet is an early example of how medium influenced form in written communication. From the beginning, the forms of our letters have been influenced by the tools we used to create them. Typography is the perfect vehicle with which to illustrate this concept throughout history. The best design explicitly acknowledges that you cannot disconnect the form from the material – the material informs the form… Medium and Form in Type History Work with these characteristics, and the design stands a chance to be good – work against them, and there is no chance.Īpple’s lead designer, Jonathan Ive knows this. With any medium – whether it’s pencil and paper, steel and glass, or pixels – the designer has to work with strengths and limitations. One of the most important principles behind every good piece of design is that the designer has to master his or her medium. But, because of the limitations of current display technologies, it’s not a good font to use in web copy – even with the advent of font embedding methodologies such as TypeKit and Google Font API. It’s a best-seller (#18 on all of Amazon).īy Why You Don’t Use Garamond on The WebĪmongst designers – especially print designers – Garamond is considered one of the best fonts in existence. Visual Design Course | White Space Course
Garamond: Why You Don't Use This Complex Font on the Web Garamond: Why You Don't Use This Complex Font on the Web