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Five minute guide to better typography

pierrickcalvez.com

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Re: Five minute guide to better typography

#11

Post by Z1515M8147 »

I have persistently encountered the same problem in this space. Most people I've worked with write documents using the last formatted document they made as a template for the next. Tracing back through their history of documents you find that they are all based off one person who decided it was a good idea to mix fonts and colours of headings, and mess around with font sizes and then save it all as default heading and text styles, and then everyone after them just uses these saved styles to save time because changing them would mean having to work with frustrating aspects of the tool (MS Word).

So my question is, how can I get people to care about this? I've argued for a properly defined corporate style guides as well as adoption of typesetting systems like LaTeX but nobody wants to hear it. Am I just in a minority by being put off by poor typographic and formatting choices and should find more important battles at work? It concerns me that customer facing documentation is severely lacking in quality.

Re: Five minute guide to better typography

#12

Post by JohnHammersley »

If you're looking for some ideas / examples for nicely formatted documents, there are some amazing LaTeX templates out there, e.g. try browsing https://www.overleaf.com/latex/templates

You can open them for editing online in Overleaf to try them out - if you do, any feedback is appreciated, thanks (I'm one of the founders).

Re: Five minute guide to better typography

#14

Post by rvern »

pvorb wrote: post #3
DoodleBuggy wrote: post #2

Nice display of typography, so much data is poorly presented nowadays. Here's a 5 second guide: use larger fonts that are easy to read with lots of white space.

Here's a 5 second guide for typography on the web: Set max-with and increase line-height. Everything else is just fine as it is.

Yes, and use the correct units when setting max-width and line-height. This is good:

  line-height: 1.4;
  max-width: 30em;
This is not:

  line-height: 120%;
  max-width: 700px;
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/line-height...

http://maxdesign.com.au/articles/ideal-line-length-in-ems/

Also, use the proper typographic characters in body text: https://www.w3.org/2009/cheatsheet/#typo.

Re: Five minute guide to better typography

#15

Post by dom0 »

Sreyanth wrote: post #6

A nice quick guide. Definitely eliminates a lot of experimentation when in hurry to get going. Here's a 10 second theory class: stick to the four principles of design - remember CRAP (not my theory though) - C: Contrast -> use contrasting design to make things that are supposed to be dissimilar look dissimilar. - R: Repetition -> repeat design patterns for similar items. Remember CSS? - A: Alignment -> don't leave an…

Reminds me of the FART photo technique (feel, ask, refine, take).

Re: Five minute guide to better typography

#16

Post by Someone »

Z1515M8147 wrote: post #11

I have persistently encountered the same problem in this space. Most people I've worked with write documents using the last formatted document they made as a template for the next. Tracing back through their history of documents you find that they are all based off one person who decided it was a good idea to mix fonts and colours of headings, and mess around with font sizes and then save it all as default heading an…

The book “the Mac is not a typewriter” (https://www.amazon.com/Mac-Not-Typewriter-2nd/dp/0201782634) may help get them some idea about style. It is 15 years old, targets print, and is aimed at Mac users, but that doesn’t matter that much.

(For PC users, there is “the PC is not a typewriter” (https://www.amazon.com/Pc-not-typewriter-Robin-Williams/dp/0...), but that is even older, so I’m not sure it will be more useful than the original, unless your users are using WordPerfect or Ventura Publisher)

Re: Five minute guide to better typography

#17

Post by jsjohnst »

Z1515M8147 wrote: post #11

I have persistently encountered the same problem in this space. Most people I've worked with write documents using the last formatted document they made as a template for the next. Tracing back through their history of documents you find that they are all based off one person who decided it was a good idea to mix fonts and colours of headings, and mess around with font sizes and then save it all as default heading an…

> Am I just in a minority

In one word, YES.

But you aren’t alone either. I feel the same way and use LaTeX for any important writing (and I didn’t start using till after uni either oddly). My resume, a bunch of guides and documents I wrote in it, as well as a book I published. My editor (with WROX) insisted I had to use a Word template for it, but I just couldn’t force myself to. Instead I wrote it in LaTeX and then made a converter to output into their specific crappy template.

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