Laura Franz Laura Franz is a Professor at UMass Dartmouth, where she teaches a wide range of type classes — including a Web Typography class in The Graduate Certificate In Web and Interaction Design.
As we refine our methods of responsive web design, we’ve increasingly focused on measure (another word for “line length”) and its relationship to how people read.
The popularization of the “ideal measure” has led to advice such as “Increase font size for large screens and reduce font size for small screens.” While a good measure does improve the reading experience, it’s only one rule... Read More
When you buy something, I bet you want it to work. Heck, even if you use something for free — maybe borrowed from a friend — I bet you want it to work. No one prefers hiking boots that are too tight (or too loose), a car that shimmies when you drive faster than 40 miles an hour, or a kitchen knife that can’t cut a tomato.
And Web designers don’t prefer fonts that don’t fit a project,... Read More
If people are on your website, they’re probably either skimming quickly, looking for something, or they’ve found what they’re looking for and want to read it as easily as possible. Either way, keeping text readable will help them achieve their goal.
A few months ago, I wrote an article on “Avoiding Faux Weights and Styles with Google Web Fonts.” I ended the article by showing that... Read More
