Time for some more website reviews! Many of this week's websites are of great interest to professional typographers and not of much interest to average Web designers. Histories, anatomies, and tutorials of typology share the assumption that we will be designing fonts -- not just the graphic logos or banners to which Web typography is mostly limited. By far the most interesting site this week was Digital Web Magazine's article on CSS typography, which is refreshingly honest about both the possibilities and the limits of type on the Web. It would also have been interesting to read about the psychological impact of serif vs. sans-serif fonts, connotations of common Web typefaces like Verdana and Georgia, and other topics that fall more wholly within the control of Web developers than typology as a discipline does.
My own website is probably going to need a new font. The default for the CSS template I chose is not bad -- once I increased the size to the point where a lowercase e could be readily distinguished from a c -- but experimentation will be salutary. I've made use of the Wichita University study linked to by the DWM article above, and agree with the intuitive result that margins and optimal leading make for a more pleasant reading experience than the alternatives; these elements will be incorporated into my site.
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