A couple of interesting things have emerged this week.

Firstly, A List Apart have at last featured another article on How to Size Type in CSS, by Richard Rutter (of webtypography.net). Its pretty good and clearly explains the process in incremental stages. However, I would also have welcomed some discussion on the semantic nature of sizing with respect to H1, H2, H3 etc and Medium, Large, Largest, Smaller and their relationship to web standards. It is also interesting that Rutter is recommending a departure from the 62.5% rule for setting 1 em equal to 10px. It was certainly much easier from a calculations perspective. There is a good discussion about this on ALA.

Secondly, Thomas Phinney published the results of his survey on web fonts (which I previously mentioned). The results are not really surprising – designers want to be able to use all of their print fonts on the web. The main issue prohibiting progress is licensing. Foundries and designers often have divergent views on this. Johnathan Hoefler, of Hoefler & Frere-Jones, suggests that while the will is there on the part of the foundries to make their fonts available for font embedding on the web, they won’t move until someone sorts out a technologically safe solution that will protect them from pirating. It seems like a bit of a deadlock, but perhaps Adobe may take the lead on it. Incidentally, I asked Erik Spiekermann (after his talk in Dublin, during Irish Design Week) what he thought could be done to improve typography on the web – his answer was ‘Sort out the licensing issue’.

I think that we also need a critical reivew of contemporary typeface design to establish what fonts are actually suitable for screen delivery. This would be a significant research project for someone to undertake – ISTD or ATypI maybe? Many of the best contemporary type designers and foundries (Hoefler & Frere-Jones, Underware, Ascender, Bruno Maag, FontFont etc) have already created bespoke fonts for screen. It would be great to see some of them become available. Web design is still the poor relation in typographic terms.

Here is yet another example of motion typography – this one is an animated typographic music video to Are You Gonna Be My Girl? There are growing collections of motion typography sequences available on the web, Yuxt is one example. Also check out another typo music video for Cuarteto de Nos which is remarkably like the piece by Jarratt Moody!

Its still hard to find any decent critical commentary about this type of work. But, sometimes its also good to just look at stuff.

Adobe’s Thomas Phinney has launched two surveys, one for web designers/producers and one for vendors/foundries, in an effort to analyse the issues regarding how to improve fonts on the web. Its a complex area, technological issues aside, the most controversial aspects relate to licensing. Phiney’s post best explains the issues so I won’t go into them. I have previously posted about Democratising Typography and about Ellen Lupton’s efforts. Whatever the solution(s), it requires joined up thinking and mobilisation from both the design and typographic communities to ensure our agenda makes it to W3C and that any new guidelines or standards take cognisance of our views. It is much needed and it’s great to see that one of the big players are doing it.

Take the time to do the survey, every view counts.

There have been a couple of interesting articles recently about the quality of contemporary web design, namely Landmark Web Sites, Where Art Thou by Armin Vit at Speak Up and Something’s Missing in Web Design by Khoi Vinh at Subtraction. Having recently been engaged in writing a critical review of contemporary practice as part of my research, I can understand the level of frustration expressed. The main points made by both articles question how a field that is so vibrant and vast, not to mention growing at an unprecedented rate has yet to yield what are traditionally deemed landmarks of good design. The comments in response to Vit’s article are telling, with many people citing examples of landmark websites, famed for their commercial success or as a web application paradigm, rather than for the quality of their design per se. The key question is not what are the landmark websites – but what and where are the landmark designs in the infinitely expanding webosphere?!

In my review I have been looking at best practice in all areas of screen typography, amongst which web typography is obviously key. My findings so far demonstrate that there is a huge amount of activity in the technical area of web typography, for example how to implement various typographic properties through CSS and how best to write semantic markup in CSS etc. However, in the area design aesthetics and typographic composition there seems to be much less emphasis, publishing or debate, with a few notable exceptions such as Mark Boulton. Many of the leading figures now emerging in the field of web typography are little known in the traditional field of print typography. Equally, many of the best-known print typographers and designers appear not to be engaged in web design work or they are not recognised for their web work (yet). Even a recent Overview of Web Design in Eye Magazine (64), failed to capture the complexity of the territory web design or provide a rigorous critique from a design perspective.

There is no question that technology is a barrier for many traditional designers, along with a palpable frustration regarding the ‘clunkiness’ of the medium and the perceived lack of control over design details when compared to print. The prevalence of W3C standards and of privileging functional rather than aesthetic concerns also add to the perceived difficulty of working in this media by traditional designers. The investment of time required to learn CSS, amongst the many other additional technical skills, is not attractive to those whose compulsion to make things (especially of a material nature) is their first priority.

There are lots of individual examples of good website design (I can cite many), but it is much harder to find single individuals or companies whose portfolio of work sustains consistent design quality over the last decade independent of changes and new developments in technology. When compared with graphic design for print, web design is in its infancy. Consider that anyone with ten years plus experience is considered a veteran of web design. Everyone has heard the comparison of web years to dog years.

Naturally, there are always a few exceptions. The original Deepend company in the UK made consistently great work and Fred Flade (originally a Deepender) went on to form Deconstruct (with other Deependers) in 2001. They are still creating design work that is both creatively and technically adroit, though it’s a shame they took down their previous website in 2004 (the current one has been in development for ages!). They have also contributed to that now pervasive Flash aesthetic of kinetic interface and information design. Yuko Nagamura also stands apart from the voluminous fog of sheer quantity that inhabits the web arena. He must be acknowledged for experimentation that was (and still is) far ahead of the mainstream. Yugop is another example of creative and technical innovation, and yet despite the technical prowess of Nagamura’s work, design and aesthetics have equal precedence. One final notable example is the portfolio of work by Group 94, a Belgian web design and development company. Their work speaks for itself. It is consistently well designed and executed with a rigourous attention to detail. Again the technical infrastructure appears cleverly integrated to equally address aesthetic and functional aspects of web design.

A clear finding from my research is the lack of published critical design reviews of the field of contemporary practice in not only web design, but screen design work in general, and most starkly screen typography. It is difficult to critique a field that has yet to be chronologically mapped, defined or even classified, and where change is continual. There is no Philip Meggs reference for web design or screen typography. Perhaps it’s too soon, or maybe we need a different way of doing it. There are countless references (Motionographer, Veer, Computerlove), but few critical ones (Design Observer). Either way, we need visual critical frameworks to judge and evaluate web design, not just functional ones. The likes of Jakob Nielsen is not appropriate. We need the ability to critique web design in granular detail addressing design concept, design treatment (typography, composition, colour etc) and design methodology.

To create (and identify) landmarks of web design we need this soon.