With a bit of research, I’ve uncovered some excellent sites concerning Typography. They come in all shapes and sizes and cover a variety of subjects within the theme. With myriads of font blogs, letter blogs, and design blogs, these two sites caught my eye and earned a placed in my top five.
Strengths: I Love Typography, or ILT as its readers affectionately label it, is a highly versatile blog that offers its audience various topics. Whether you are looking for a history lesson or simply want to look up new fonts, this site has a little bit of something for everyone. The writing is well done and filled with honest passion and interest concerning the topic of typeface, lettering, text design and more. As a source, this blog is a necessary read for anyone interested in typography.
Weaknesses: Unfortunately, finding this information can be somewhat daunting. With a side bar, a top bar, an add bar, and the recent posts all lined up next to each other, the page can be a bit overwhelming. Overall, the visual stimulation is a bit much when it comes to the home page. However, once you settle into an article these problems seem to disappear.
Opportunities: With a bit of reorganization, the site could be extremely effective. A regular follower of the blog may have no problem navigating the site, but a newbie will experience a bit of confusion at first. The opening page is jumbled, thus cleaning it up might help. Having less text or widening the space in which the posts appear could clarify the layout. It needs to make a statement about the typefaces used by giving them space to breath. Then, not only will the text talk about typography, but the site design will as well.
Tensions: Typographica, a site dedicated to type reviews, books, and commentaries concerning the world of typography, is a definite competitor of I Love Typography. Although ILT covers a variety of different topics, both sites contain commentaries and histories of fonts. The advantage that Typographica has over ILT is its organization and graphic appeal. The design is simple, straightforward, and easy to navigate. It even sorts text by designer, foundry, and classification.
While ILT covers everything to know about Typography, let us take a quick look at a more specialized blog.
Strengths: Typography-Daily focuses purely on the use of text in design. The site itself uses few words, but like its subject, focuses on the graphic use of typography. Each article or post is a thumbnail instead of a title. The visitor sees the use of text first rather than reading about the topic.
Weaknesses: The site has a lovely layout, but it lacks exactly what lends it strength—text. Although, the use of graphics is effective, there is, what some might call, a lack of description. The site is not completely void of links to information about the art displayed on the blog, but most links are broken. Therefore, if any one wanted to explore the design further there is little hope of finding information without a title or reference.
Opportunities: Typography-Daily does a decent job of citing sources, but it could definitely bump it up a notch. As a user, it would be helpful to have more links or background information on the graphics.
Tensions: A similar blog based on the expression of type through design is Typography Served. There are several writers for this blog, thus a larger source income. Therefore, this site may very well overtake Typography-Daily when it comes to finding innovative text use and design. However, this blog too suffers from lack of description and source links. Ultimately, it comes down to who posts the more pleasing pictures.