TobyInkster.co.uk
22/06/2007: A New Look for TobyInkster.co.uk
This site has had a few facelifts recently. Hopefully this one will stick. It’s based on two main principles:
- Use Hoefler Text for copy. It’s an absolutely gorgeous font which comes with Mac OS X that I was recently using on a printed document. Hoefler has a delicious set of italic glyphs — they were properly designed in their own right — they’re not just sloping versions of the roman (non-italic) glyphs. It also uses ascending/descending numerals, which look a lot nicer in the normal flow of text than block numerals do. Garamond and Georgia are reasonable substitutes when it’s not available.
- The Guardian (newspaper, not website) looks good; copy it! That’s where I got the idea for the small blue “TobyInkster.co.uk” heading at the top of each page.
I’ve combined this with a few other minor ideas:
- Numbers and bullet points from lists hang into the margin. The last couple of versions of my site did that too.
- Use classical ratios for font sizes. Assuming your browser default text is 12pt, then the main heading for each page is 36pt, sub-headings 24pt, sub-subheadings 18pt, and sub-sub-subheadings 14pt. Small text is 9pt, 10pt or 11pt. Headings on the side column are 14pt. Of course, if you’ve changed you have a different text size for your browser, then all these should scale accordingly.
I’ll probably make a few changes to the comments form, but I do rather like this look, so hopefully no big changes for a while now.