It might have been through the book, Designing with Web Standards by Ethan Marcotte and Jeffrey Zeldman that I first learned about making Typography the foundation of website and web application design.
Two awesome books Ethan Marcotte and Jeffrey Zeldman recommended are The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst and Thinking with Type by Ellen Lupton, which also has an in depth companion website.
A few months ago, I somehow found my way to a post by Zell Liew about the implementation of a Modular Scale–where there is a pattern to the size differences between various elements of text–and responsive typography in general. Maybe it was this one.
I started using his SASS mixin suite, Typi, and ultimately made my way into and through his pretty thorough tutorial, Mastering Responsive Typography. It’s a direct route to a full initial understanding of the complex, evolving world of responsive web typography.
Contents of the book include:
- Web Typography Best Practices like the relationships between Font-size, Leading and Measure and how to combine them with a Modular Scale and Vertical Rhythm.
- The Design Principles of Repetition, Contrast, Alignment and Proximity
- Using Different Font-sizes for Different Devices
- The use of Relative Units of measurement in the web and the difference between EM, REM, VH and VW
- Structuring your frontend code
- How to make use of his wonderful SASS mixin Suite, Typi, which automates a lot of the calculations necessary to develop a Responsive Modular Scale and Vertical Rhythm.
- There’s even a bonus chapter on Communication between Designers and Developers
Each chapter features exercises at the end to give you some practical experience and practice of the methods explained and Zell himself is very approachable for any clarifications you might be wanting. Treat your self, make the web a better place, and tell Zell I sent you.