font fun

I’m feeling weird about fonts lately

I have tweaked some of the fonts on the site again (but not all of them, so there is a bit of a crazy quilt effect going on here).

Specifically:

Body font: JetBrains Mono

Heading 2 font (used for post titles): Ubuntu Mono

As an added bonus for me, because WP doesn’t “see” JetBrains Mono in the editor, it is using Bold Segoe UI at 17px instead.

I’m all about the monospaced fonts. For now. For today. We’ll see what happens tomorrow.

EDIT: I have already changed the Header font to Barlow Semi Condensed, mere minutes later.

EDIT 2: I've now changed the sidebar to JetBrains Mono and also made the background colour of the site blue, and the sidebar a greenish-yellow. Or a yellowish-green.

EDIT 3: I've updated the blue in the logo to make it a bit lighter and it seems WP just needed to cache the fonts, as the editor now shows JetBrains Mono, as nature intended. More tweaking undoubtedly to come.

New font: Gabarito

I’ve changed the body font again. Why? Because I can. Also, because I was randomly looking through Google Fonts and Gabarito caught my eye. And it sounds sassy and fun. Gabarito!

Anyway, this is what it looks like via screenshot, because I may change it again in a week as I continue to ponder the site’s design:

Yes, I am constantly changing the body font

As I post this on September 27, 2023, the body font for my blog here is the Google font Zilla Slab. It may change soon. It will probably change soon. I can never find one I quite like. I am going through my Serif Phase now, though, so whatever comes next will likely be a serif font.

And yes, I know technically these are typefaces, and it’s only the specific variants that are called fonts, but that battle has long been lost, typography nerds. Sorry!

One day I may even be bold enough to tinker with the site again. Until then, I have billions more fonts to go through.

For when it gets changed, this is what Zilla Slab looks like:

Serif vs. Sans serif: Fight!

UPDATE: I have turned radical and am now using the serif typeface Bitter for headings. Anarchy!

I’ve been thinking about my blog redesign, as I do periodically, and have read several articles arguing in favour of using serif fonts for body text on websites. The old belief was that text on screen evolved to be mainly sans serif because low resolution screens made serifs harder to read, as they couldn’t be rendered well. Now with fancy™ screen technology and higher resolutions, that’s not a problem, so it’s time to return to serifs for body text, following the lead of virtually all novels and most books in general.

And yet I cannot find a serif I like. They all look too thin or too fat, or too fancy. Part of it is laziness, because the theme I use, the excellent GeneratePress, offers a list of dozens of Google fonts, but it isn’t trivially easy to deviate from the list. And I am lazy, so trivially easy is important. But I will keep poking at it.

For now, I am using Heebo for body text again, because it’s a clean-looking sans serif font, plus the name is adorable.

Also, I’ve tried going through some “best fonts” lists and as you might imagine, a lot of them are SEO-driven junk. But there’s a few out there! I will expand on this post later.

(And yes, I know the difference between a typeface and font, but that battle is long since lost for the pedants.)

10 point Courier is not retro cool

PROGRAMMING NOTE: This is not actually about programming. I just wanted to pre-apologize for YANP (Yet Another Negative Post). I'm still recovering from a surprisingly long illness and am kind of grumpy about it. I promise to be more charitable, loving, etc. soon™.

The Browser Company, makers of the Mac-only (but eventually also Windows) browser Arc, sends out a periodic newsletter with updates on all Arc things. This is good! The newsletter is full of pictures and animations and is written in a fun, engaging style. This is also good!

The newsletter is written in 10 pt. Courier. This translates to around 13px.

I have a pair of monitors that run at 2560×1440. 13px type looks like this relative to the screen size (it may look larger or smaller depending on the resolution of the device you read this post on, but for reference, it is, on my displays, SMALL):

Most of the email I get is in some sans serif font, like Arial, and in sizes ranging from 14px up to 18px. The reason why most email uses these settings is because it makes the text clear and readable.

Tiny Courier is the opposite. It’s also ugly as heck. It’s not 1986. Stop trying to be cute and “retro.”

And yes, I did complain (tactfully) to Arc about this.

Anyway, I’m off to look at kittens now.

I like the way you type(face)

The other day I was looking at this-here blog of mine and thinking about sprucing it up a bit. I have several other images I could use for the header, though I must admit I’m still smitten with the clean, crisp look of Buntzen Lake I have up there now. I could adopt a new theme but I blanch at the thought of all the manual tweaking I’d have to do in order to get it look just the way I wanted.

I also gave thought to tweaking the existing theme, perhaps going with a different body font. Right now I use Verdana, which is entirely readable if a bit bland. I experimented with Arial, Georgia and Garamond but none of them quite looked right. I began searching the vast reaches of the Internet and found a site called I Love Typography. I instantly went gaga over the body font used there and used my Interweb sleuthing skills to determine which font it was, as the site did not appear to share this particular detail. My efforts were without success so I sent an e-mail to the author of the (quite lovely) site and to my delight, he replied the same day with a single word response: Scala.

I now had knowledge but was faced with two new problems as a result:

  1. How the heck did he get a font I clearly do not have to render properly on his site? What sort of JavaScript or CSS trickery was involved? I would have to find out.
  2. Scala is a paid font. If I wanted to buy it I’d be looking at about $239 U.S. for the six fonts featured in the FF Scala Web collection. Now, I’m not saying they are not worth it. I’m saying I wish I had $239 to blow on fonts, because I’d probably have enough to buy some nice fudge, too. Mmm, fudge. Lacking both fudge and funds, my alternative is to look for a reasonable facsimile of Scala as a free font. That means combing through roughly one trillion hideous fonts scattered across an equally large number of font websites.

Ergo, Verdana stays. For now.