782: The Developer’s Guide To Fonts with Stephen Nixon

Syntax - Tasty Web Development Treats

Wes Bos

Tech News, News, Technology

4.9 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 14 June 2024

⏱️ 62 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Scott and CJ are joined by Stephen Nixon of ArrowType to delve into the world of fonts and type for developers. They explore the intricacies of font creation, the utility of variable fonts, and offer tips for making visually appealing typography on the web. Show Notes 00:00 Welcome to Syntax! 00:57 Who is Stephen Nixon? Process Type Foundry. Mark Simonson Proxima Nova. 05:42 What is a type foundry exactly? ArrowType. 09:09 Font / type making. 09:15 How do you make a font? RoboFont. Glyphs. 11:58 Fonts vs typefaces. 13:02 How many fonts have you made? 14:17 What are variable fonts and how can web developers utilize them? 19:22 Animating fonts. Variable Fonts. Recursive. 20:28 Do you code your demo sites yourself? 21:50 Are variable fonts more complex to design (and develop). Matthew Carter Adobe Fonts, Matthew Carter Wiki. Multiple Masters Variable Fonts. Just My Type. 27:03 Hand painted fonts. House industries. Golden Sign Co. Gen Ramirez. 29:39 Creating a monospace font. 32:19 Creating fonts with dyslexia accessibility in mind. 37:58 Typography for the web. 38:29 What are some 80/20 rules developers can employ to make more visually appealing typography? 40:58 Type scale calculations. Scott’s Fluid Type Calculator. 45:42 What are your biggest web type pet peeves. 48:46 Do you have any favorite type tools? Wakamifondue. Fixing Variable Font Inheritance. 50:34 Supper Club Questions. 50:44 How do you feel about ligatures in coding fonts? Ligatures In Programming Fonts Hell No. 55:11 What font do you use? Name Sans v05. Name-Mono. 56:43 What is your favorite font of all time? Typotheque. Soehne. Grillitype Typefaces. Phnotype. 58:49 Sick Picks + Shameless Plugs. Sick Picks Stephen: Children of Time, No-Recipe Recipes. Shameless Plugs Stephen: ArrowType, Skewing Fonts. Hit us up on Socials! Syntax: X Instagram Tiktok LinkedIn Threads Wes: X Instagram Tiktok LinkedIn Threads Scott:X Instagram Tiktok LinkedIn Threads Randy: X Instagram YouTube Threads

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Syntax. Today we have a really special guest, a type of developer we have not talked to before. In fact, typographer developer.
0:12.0	We're going to be getting into the nitty gritty of designing
0:15.6	typefaces, typography on the web, all sorts of cool stuff. So with us today is
0:20.9	Stephen Nixon, he's the owner of a type foundry arrow type.
0:26.4	And we're going to be picking Stephen's brain about all things, typography in the web,
0:30.9	getting deep into variable fonts.
0:33.7	So Stephen, what's up?
0:36.0	Thank you so much for having me, Scott.
0:37.5	It's really exciting to be here.
0:39.0	Yeah.
0:39.8	Stephen and I talk on IG sometimes,
0:42.2	and I've been following his typefaces and his
0:45.7	font progress on there and all sorts of different typography information so I was
0:50.8	really stoked when you had mentioned me in a comment Stephen that you were aware of syntax.
0:55.0	Long time, long time lurker. Yep.
0:57.0	Yeah.
0:58.0	So let's get into it.
1:00.0	First and foremost, like what's your background?
1:02.0	How did you get into type? how did you get into type design?
1:05.4	There's there's kind of the like five year history and there's the 30 year history I guess
1:15.0	I've always been really attracted to drawing letters and logos and kind of geometric problems I guess kind of
1:21.6	click nicely in my brain so to give the 30 year history
	...

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