Web typography is at once simple and complex. At its core, it’s about how you arrange text so they’re pleasing and easy to read—yet there’s an endless number of ways to achieve an optimal reading experience.

This is a practical guide to navigating the rabbit hole of web typography so that you can create optimal textual experiences on the web. It’s the kind of guide I wish I had when I started.

This is a long one. But this is the only article you need to get started—although you’re welcome to do a further reading because typography is just amazing.

The Holy Trinity of Web Typography

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We met three years ago through a theater project. He was a dashing actor; I was a freelance designer. He reached out through Facebook and, unexpectedly, we started chatting daily. We had an instant connection, and I was hooked. We planned to go on our first date once his play concluded.

But a few days before that happened, he suddenly ghosted me. After more than a month of intimate daily messages... radio silence.

Three years later in 2019, he ended his life.

This is a collection of ruminations, of memories that were half-forgotten and then forcefully, painfully, pried open. It’s…

At Mobile World Congress 2018, something strange and interesting happened. No, I’m not talking about Samsung’s new S9 and S9+ phones (though they are interesting, all right).

I’m referring to the weird phenomenon of Android phone makers copying one of the iPhone X’s worst features—its wildly controversial notch.

To provide some background, the iPhone X, released in late 2017, features an all-screen design except for a notch, a cut-out at the top of the screen, that houses all the sensors required for FaceID, its new facial authentication method.

At its worst, the notch represents a compromise that Apple took in…

I’m a product designer working remotely in Singapore, which means I spend most days in the comfort of my home. Sometimes, though, when I need a change in environment, I’d go to a cafe to get my work done.

The problem is that it’s incredibly difficult to find cafes to work in. By “work”, I mean actual, serious work—creating mockups on Sketch, liaising with colleagues via Slack, having video calls on Skype.

This means the ideal work-friendly cafe has to have:

1. reliable WiFi,
2. power outlets (this is really important and hard to find),
3. a friendly environment that allows you to…

FastCo Design recently published an article on the iPhone X, explaining (and lamenting) how the iPhone has gone from “the most elegant user experience ever” to a “nightmare”.

It’s an interesting read, and there are a number of valid points. For instance, FastCo notes that the number of iOS gestures has reached a record high, and that necessarily results in increasingly complex UX. Many of the gestures are also hard to perform.

But it’s not a very good article.

Not because it’s an Apple-bashing article (again, the points raised were fair). It’s not good simply because it doesn’t contain a…

On September 12th, Tim Cook unveiled the iPhone X. The 10-year anniversary iPhone sports a “bezel-less” 5.8 inch screen in a beautiful new design. It features a new facial recognition technology called Face ID, which uses 3D imaging and infrared, meaning it can be used in the dark and is more accurate than fingerprint scanning (unless you’re a twin). Apple claims it to be the future of the smartphone.

There is a problem, though. iPhone X has a design compromise staring right at us. The “bezel-less” screen of the iPhone X runs from rounded edge to edge, but has a…

In March 2016, Google updated Material Design to add bottom navigation bars to its UI library. This new bar is positioned at the bottom of an app, and contains 3 to 5 icons that allow users to navigate between top-level views in an app.

Sound familiar? That’s because bottom navigation bars have been a part of iOS’s UI library for years (they’re called tab bars in iOS).

While traveling in Tokyo and Osaka in December 2016, I came across a few little instances of design that struck me as being particularly well thought out. These well-designed experiences might seem simple and easy to miss or take for granted, but they pack tremendous design intelligence that we can learn from.

“Everything is designed. Few things are designed well.”
— Brian Reed

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