Ampersand Industries

Fonts

Matt — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 10:43:06 +0000

For a long, long time websites were restricted to using the web safe set of fonts – fonts that you were pretty sure would be on the computer of anyone who visited the site.

In the last few years various font replacement techniques have been used, some more succesfully than others.

Sifr used to be a favourite of mine until the use of flash started to become a problem. There were various instances where an upgrade to Flash knocked out the font display in the site, and of course anyone who wants their site to be readable on a iphone/pad/pod would need to avoid this approach.

Cufon is another great font replacement technique that uses javascript and a canvas element to draw the font, replacing the text. I still favour this at times due to the quality of the font that is drawn – crisp, smooth and anti-aliased across all browsers. The downside, of course, is that it needs javascript in order to show as you intended. It also adds weight to the page, increasing the load time, and can result in a staggered load of the page – first unstyled, then with the replaced font coming in. Because of this I’ve always recommended that it only be used for headings and possible single blocks of text, such as a pull quote.

Increasingly, I’m finding the use of webfonts to be the best approach to opening up the possibilities for text.

Google WebFonts is a great, free online resource which hosts the fonts for you. And there are a number of font foundries that offer either cheap or free fonts that can be isntalled in webfont format. For example FontSpring.

This has the benefit of loading in much more smoothly than flash or javascript replacement and at a lower overhead, so fonts can be replaced throughout the page, not just the headers. You do still need to be slightly cautious, however, as not all fonts render well at all sizes (small body text is often nasty with the more decorative fonts) and some browsers render the fonts more cleanly than others at the larger sizes. Firefox can often render large heading fonts as slightly jagged.

Interesting site and navigation

Matt — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 13:18:05 +0000

NotCot is a great site for flagging up interesting products, projects and ideas around the web. It’s updated a lot and this means that there are now a large number of pages to navigate through. So many that it could be a bit unwieldy to navigate.

They’ve build a very compact, neat navigation of the pages that may take a bit of getting used to, but which strikes me as a very neat way of presenting so many links in such a small space.

NotCot page navigation

Font Aid

Matt — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 13:23:15 +0000

Font Aid is a project that brings together designers who create a themed font that is then sold to raise money for charity.

The fourth project created a font called Coming Together, full of great Ampersands and the money goes to Doctors Without Borders.

Another great showcase of Ampersands

Matt — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 09:26:15 +0000

Design Shack have a great article linking to various great uses of Ampersand. Perhaps getting close to Christmas is a good time to highlight some of the cool things on here!

http://designshack.co.uk/articles/typography/ode-to-ampersand-30-inspiring-images-of-our-favorite-character

Cool photoshop demo

Matt — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 10:58:18 +0000

When I used to teach Photoshop at Adult Education classes, people always used to think Photoshop could work magic, that you could cut people out of a photo and the background behind them would be suddenly visible. I blamed this on programs like Spooks that used to show this all the time.

Looks like Photoshop has finally caught up with Spooks, see this demo video.

We live in the future!

Via Kottke

Ampersand showcase

Matt — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 12:17:49 +0000

A great looking site after my own heart with a love of ampersands. This is going to go on my daily check list of sites:

http://ampersandampersand.tumblr.com/

Twitter Updates for January 2010

Matt — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 09:06:00 +0000

no face to face meetings this afternoon so should be safe with garlic mushrooms for lunch #
smugness from easy parking at blue bar for meeting offset by them being closed for a month #
Still lunch at http://bit.ly/7aPoNv was very good so that helped make up for it #
Hard to feel the pain of couple on tv with a budget five times cost of my home trying to buy house #relocationx3 #
Also fun: Kirsty lamenting price of property in Cornwall due to EXACTLY WHAT THEIR ENTIRE PROGRAMME IS ABOUT! #relocationX3 #
Weather so stormy in the night half expected to not be in Kansas anymore. Or not have a roof left. #
very glad to work off a laptop especially when there’s a powerful just before you save something #
and 3, 2, 1… back in the room. 20 minutes of enforced being offline. Hell on toast! Mind you got some work done… #
@ksl_rich It was like being in my very own episode of survivors, struggling to survive off grid. in reply to ksl_rich #
Text from my mum – apparently 22 years to the day since I had my tonsils removed. Not even a card to mark the occasion. #
@patroclus Thank you! Very nice actually despite spending most of it in a car on the A303 and also a little chef! in reply to patroclus #
@patroclus Janis Joplin, not sure if she made particularly ‘notable’ albums versus just great songs. in reply to patroclus #
@patroclus ah, didn’t realise the british angle so janis joplin not of much use… in reply to patroclus #
Coding HTML email newsletter is not compatible with successfully making lentil soup. #burnt-dinner-fail #

Twitter Updates December 2009

Matt — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 09:06:00 +0000

at royal festival hall about to pull sandi toksvig’s christmas cracker. Stephen mangan guesting tonight apparently #
Working in London, getting a bit excited that it’s snowing. #
Created my first book using http://www.blurb.com last week, just arrived. Very excited. #
It’s a photo book version of my travel blog from last year http://bit.ly/52LEzR #
@ksl_rich yep, absolutely! #
@patroclus Not tragic, justifying the existence of iplayer! in reply to patroclus #
@patroclus Didn’t have a photo unfortunately, just mentioned seeing it. Sure someone had a photo of it somewhere though. Will have a look in reply to patroclus #
@patroclus Ah, looks like it’s not just random wording on a menu – it’s a company http://bit.ly/6UccBf in reply to patroclus #

Good news in Open Source CMS awards

Matt — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 11:19:36 +0000

The 2009 Open Source CMS awards have been announced with great results for the two main solutions that we use at Ampersand.

WordPress won the Best Overall award. Some recent examples of sites we’ve built with WordPress include this site, 21st Century Boy and Kate Kerrow.

Drupal won the Hall of Fame Award and Best Open Source PHP CMS. Recent Drupal sites that we’ve launched include Contract Sign Systems and Gloria.

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-11-22

Matt — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 09:06:00 +0000

Tempted by picture frame with "casual bevelled edges". Rather than strictly formal bevelled edges I presume. #
On the look out now for one with nonchalantly bevelled edges #
@camelwinemaker see HFW was cooking with your wine tonight on River Cottage #