“Web design is 95% typography,” and the type that designers choose shapes how we experience the web. Several people have asked lately about how to tell which font is being used on a website. Here are two ways–one slightly technical and one fairly simple:

Slightly technical: The “Inspect Element” tool

Buried in your browser is a tool that web developers use to look behind the scenes at how a website is working. Unless you are building websites or working on one, you probably won’t use this tool often but it can be helpful. Depending on which browser you’re using, you can Right Click (or Control Click on a Mac) on the text you’re curious about and choose, “Inspect” or “Inspect Element” as it’s seen here:

When you click “Inspect” you’ll see a window open up that looks like the one below. If you’re not familiar with CSS the easiest way to see which font is being used is to click on the “Computed” tab and scroll down to “font-family”:

Simple to use: Fontface Ninja

If you want an even simpler way to explore fonts used on a webpage, you can install the Fontface Ninja browser extension for Chrome. Once you have it installed, you can click the icon and hover over any text in your browser window. A bubble pops up that gives you the name of the font, the color, and some other helpful metrics about how the type is being used:

Tools for using type on the web

Beyond identifying type, the next step is to learn how to use it better. Here are three great tools for becoming a better typographer:

Typewolf — If you’d like to take a guided tour of typography on the web, Typewolf is a great resource. Designer Jeremiah Shoaf reviews a new site every day, highlighting unique fonts in use on the web and featuring successful type combinations.

A List Apart — If you’re moving from reading type on the web to designing with type on the web, A List Apart is a carefully considered (and well-designed)

Practical Typography — The most useful (and best-designed) digital handbook for typography on the web is Matthew Butterick’s Practical Typography. It’s insightful and easy to read. If you want to handle type well, you should make the time to read his Typography in Ten Minutes.

Book Design, Design, Type Design, Typography, Web design

Crisp air and leaves on the ground—they’re shutting down Summer.

Illustration

Protect your eyes during the 2017 solar eclipse!

A lot of people are understandably concerned about protecting their vision during the eclipse, so I put together these protective eclipse glasses.

These handcrafted wooden lenses, made from locally sourced, organic yellow pine, will block 100% of the harmful light rays, allowing the wearer to enjoy the eclipse without suffering any permanent damage to their vision.

Being Human, Community, Ideas

Wanted: paper grocery lists

I’m collecting images of paper grocery lists for an upcoming project. If you have a grocery list you’d like to contribute, please upload a photo or a scan of it here. I’d love it if you could provide some context for your grocery list—was it for a special occasion, or just routine shopping? Where do you shop? Do you shop with someone or by yourself?

To follow this project, you can also include your contact information (whether or not you contribute a grocery list). None of your information will be shared or used for any other purpose.

Upload your list:

Being Human, Community, Ideas

When you rush off in the middle of the night to have a baby, life as you had planned it for the next few days gets upended. You reschedule work meetings and any plans you’d made become tentative. You rely on friends and family more than usual. You sleep less than you’d like to, your own meals get put on the back burner, and you probably drink more coffee than is reasonable.

Essentially, the day of the actual birth is the same as how I experience parenthood in general, just compressed into about 12 hours.

Essentially, the day of the actual birth is the same as how I experience parenthood in general, just compressed into about 12 hours.

Today is my first day back to work since Ramona was born, thanks to MJM‘s remarkably generous paternity leave. Mel and I are very grateful for the last two weeks to get to know our little girl, and for the time to help the other kids adjust to a “new normal.” Thanks to the MJM team for the extra work it took to make it possible. We’ve also really appreciated the meals (and the coffee) friends and family have been bringing by, and the messages and all the offers to help with the other kids.

We appreciate you all, and we’re reminded that being self-sufficient is neither possible nor desirable–we’re built to live in community. Our life is richer because you’re all in it, and we can’t wait to introduce you to our sweet little girl.

Being Human, Illustration