Wednesday 3 December 2008

Good Website Examples



















Here are four examples of website design that I think are superior to the others I've encountered, They're designs are clean, clear and stylish. Especially the adobe site due to its smooth look.





Tuesday 2 December 2008

Typography

The following is information on typography taken from wikipedia:

History
For the origins and evolution of typography, see the main articles History of western typography, History of typography in East Asia, and Movable type.

Look up typography in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
Etymology: Typography (from the Greek words τύπος typos = "to strike" "That by which something is symbolized or figured …" and γραφία graphia = to write).
Typography traces its origins to the first punches and dies used to make seals and currency in ancient times. The first known movable type printing artifact is probably the Phaistos Disc, though its real purpose remains disputed. The item dates between 1850 BC and 1600 BC, back to Minoan age and is now on display at the archaeological museum of Herakleion in Crete, Greece.
Typography with movable type was separately invented in 11th-century China, and modular movable metal type began in 13th-century China, was developed again in mid-15th century Europe with the development of specialised techniques for casting and combining cheap copies of letterpunches in the vast quantities required to print multiple copies of texts.

[edit] Scope
In contemporary use, the practice and study of typography is very broad, covering all aspects of letter design and application. These include:
typesetting and type design;
handwriting and calligraphy;
graffiti;
inscriptional and architectural lettering;
poster design and other large scale lettering such as signage and billboards;
business communications and promotional collateral;
advertising;
wordmarks and typographic logos (logotypes);
apparel (clothing);
labels on maps;
vehicle instrument panels;
kinetic typography in motion picture films and television;
as a component of industrial design—type on household appliances, pens and wristwatches, for example.
and as a component in modern poetry (see, for example, the poetry of e. e. cummings)
Since digitization, typography has spread to a wider ranger of applications, appearing on web pages, LCD mobile phone screens, and hand-held video games. The ubiquity of type has led typographers to coin the phrase "Type is everywhere".
Traditional typography follows four principles: repetition, contrast, proximity, and alignment.

[edit] Text typography

Text typeset in Iowan Old Style roman, italics and small caps, optimized at approximately 10 words per line, typeface sized at 14 points on 1.4 x leading, with 0.2 points extra tracking. Extract of an essay by Oscar Wilde The English Renaissance of Art ca. 1882.

Text typeset using LaTeX digital typesetting software
In traditional typography, text is composed to create a readable, coherent, and visually satisfying whole that works invisibly, without the awareness of the reader. Even distribution with a minimum of distractions and anomalies are aimed at producing clarity and transparency.
Choice of font(s) is perhaps the primary aspect of text typography—prose fiction, non-fiction, editorial, educational, religious, scientific, spiritual and commercial writing all have differing characteristics and requirements. For historic material, established text typefaces are frequently chosen according to a scheme of historical genre acquired by a long process of accretion, with considerable overlap between historical periods.
Contemporary books are more likely to be set with state-of-the-art seriffed "text romans" or "book romans" with design values echoing present-day design arts, which are closely based on traditional models such as those of Nicolas Jenson, Francesco Griffo (a punchcutter who created the model for Aldine typefaces), and Claude Garamond. With their more specialized requirements, newspapers and magazines rely on compact, tightly-fitted text romans specially designed for the task, which offer maximum flexibility, readability and efficient use of page space. Sans serif text fonts are often used for introductory paragraphs, incidental text and whole short articles. A current fashion is to pair sans serif type for headings with a high-performance seriffed font of matching style for the text of an article.
The text layout, tone or color of set matter, and the interplay of text with white space of the page and other graphic elements combine to impart a "feel" or "resonance" to the subject matter. With printed media typographers are also concerned with binding margins, paper selection and printing methods.
Typography is modulated by orthography and linguistics, word structures, word frequencies, morphology, phonetic constructs and linguistic syntax. Typography also is subject to specific cultural conventions. For example, in French it is customary to insert a non-breaking space before a colon (:) or semicolon (;) in a sentence, while in English it is not.