I wrote recently about re-evaluating the font I use here on the site, as well as some other design elements. Well let me show you what it looks like when you know what you’re doing.

This guy, Rod Graves, has it down. Simplicity is the key to many things, including a clean, sophisticated feeling web site. I particularly like this page that I got the image above from: http://www.rodgraves.com/profile/.

I mean just look at how clean that is. I’ve spent hours scrubbing the web for this kind of quality, and this is where I’m taking my site as I move forward with it, keeping two ideas in the forefront:

1. Content
2. Presentation

As either one suffers so does the other.:

So I’ve been doing a little work with my typography. I’ve changed my font-size and line-height to em measurements, and I’ve increased their sizes as well. How does this look? The idea is to be more readable without getting so large as to appear childish.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Q: What did one em say to the other em?

A: Who’s your daddy?

So I’m getting ready to do some major reworking of my design. The guiding force will be the 100% Easy to Read Standard. The first bit of this I did just now by making the default font 13px instead of 12px. Let me know what you guys think.

Here’s a quote I like from the IA site:

95% of what is commonly referred to as web design is typography.

Nice. In addition to that shift I’m also going to a new color scheme and maybe even a different layout. It’s going to be major. On change I’m nearly decided on is going to a white background. Lots of ideas…

Anyway, let me know if you guys like the larger font.

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I have a new design philosophy. It’s called 100% Easy to Read. Here are the highlights:

• Don’t tell us to adjust the font size
• Don’t tell us busy pages look better
• Don’t tell us scrolling is bad
• Don’t tell us text isn’t important (95% of “web design” is typography)
• Don’t tell us to get glasses (use a font-size that’s large enough)

Here are the 5 basic rules:

1.  Standard font size for long texts
2. Active white space
3. Reader-friendly line height
4. Clear color contrast
5. No text in images

There are two other concepts that jumped out at me: using text as an interface, and the understanding that typography is not the art of selecting typefaces. Typography is so much more.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the presentation of my text lately. Until now it’s been about the formatting of the text within the post itself, but now I’m thinking more about the look of the entire page and site.

I’m going to be doing a lot with this in coming weeks and months. I at least have an idea of what I want; now I just need to get there. I thank the heavens for CSS.: