Author
Jason Santa Maria
Jason Santa Maria is a graphic designer with a deep love for letters. He’s the founder of Brooklyn-based design firm Mighty; a faculty member at SVA’s MFA Interaction Design program; a cofounder of A Book Apart; and the founder of Typedia, a shared online encyclopedia of typefaces. Previously, he cofounded the collaborative writing platform Editorially; he also served as the vice president of AIGA/NY and as the creative director for A List Apart and Typekit. He has designed websites that balance beauty and usability for clients such as AIGA, The Chicago Tribune, Housing Works, Miramax Films, The New York Stock Exchange, PBS, The United Nations, and WordPress. He discusses design on his award-winning website. He can be found on Twitter @jasonsantamaria.
Also from this author
When you read, you filter text through your experiences and past conversations. You put words into context. You interpret. So how can we use typography to welcome readers and convince them to sit with us through this process? A List Apart alum Jason Santa Maria explains in this excerpt from Chapter 1 of On Web Typography, his new book from A Book Apart.
Until now, chances are that if we dropped text onto a web page in a system font at a reasonable size, it was legible. But with many typefaces about to be freed for use on websites, choosing the right ones to complement a site's design will be far more challenging. Many faces to which we'll soon have access were never meant for screen use, either because they're aesthetically unsuitable or because they're just plain illegible. Jason Santa Maria, a force behind improved type on the web, presents qualities and methods to keep in mind as we venture into the widening world of web type.
