Many WordPress designers seem to think typography is nothing more than choosing the right plugin to get a bunch of “cool fonts” onto their pages and posts. That’s understandable because almost anyone might get that idea after reading the typical typography-related blog posts out there.

But the art of typography is about so much more than that, and the power of good typography can make a huge difference in the way visitors react to our WordPress websites.

The Reluctant Typographer

When we put text onto a WordPress page or post, we’re setting type. And that means, by at least one definition, we are typographers. The problem is that many of us are not very good at it. Some of us were typographers decades before WordPress was even imagined. But even more of us had never even heard the word “typography” until recently.

It’s easy to just not think about typography. What’s the point of typography, anyway, we might ask. While some studies show that good typography increases reading comprehension and eases reader fatigue, not all studies agree.

Some people say that good typography makes a page look better. Really? That’s pretty subjective, isn’t it?

Mood Music by the Steve Jobs Band

OK, but those of us who are into typography believe both of those ideas, regardless of the studies and the people who might disagree. Without even going to art school we grok the artistry of typography on a conscious and on a subliminal level. We know that typography (good or bad) makes a big difference.

As an example, marketing experts know that a big part of Apple’s coolness factor and high-quality image comes from the way Apple uses type. Steve Jobs loved typography, and from the very beginning he insisted on using a unique variant of a classic typeface and high-level typography, with everything perfectly spaced and with perfect contrast, in every bit of Apple’s marketing.

Typography is everywhere, and readers are affected by it even when they’re not consciously aware of the details. Typography doesn’t just affect the look of our pages. Typography affects the mood of the person viewing and reading our pages.

Typography expert Thomas Phinney said that, “A set of studies found two ways to measure the impact of good versus bad typography. One was ‘reduced activation in the corrugator muscle’ (people frowned less), and the other was ‘improved performance on creative cognitive tasks tackled after reading.’

So it looks like good typography might even make our site visitors happier.

Should I Stay Or Should I Go?

Here’s one more reason to bring our typography to a higher level: Maybe you’ve noticed that people don’t really like to read.

With so many other things to do, interest in reading is not what it used to be. Many of us still read for pleasure and enjoyment, but many people only read when they have to. They want to find out about something that happened, or they want to find out how something works. So they go to a website to look it up. But they really don’t want to read. And – here’s the key point – many readers are just looking for a reason to stop reading – as soon as they can.

The slightest problem with what they’re reading can make them give up. Good typography or bad typography – which one would you think might make a reluctant reader more likely to give up? Typography (good or bad) can make the difference between visitors staying on our sites or going elsewhere.

The Warning Signs of Bad Typography

How do we know if we have good typography or bad typography? It takes some practice and some study to actually see the difference, even though site visitors can feel the difference, even if they’re not consciously aware.

Here are some of the hallmarks of typical bad typography:

1. Word Spacing: Two word spaces instead of one between sentences. Word space that’s too wide or (rarely) too narrow.
2. Punctuation: Quotation marks that are straight up and down (not real quotation marks). Two hyphens instead of an em dash or en dash.
3. Tracking: Throughout a line of type, the space between characters is too loose or (rarely) too tight.
4. Kerning: The space between a pair of characters is too loose or (rarely) too tight.
5. Distortion: Artificially expanding or compressing letterforms.
6. Typeface Choices: Using typefaces that are inappropriate for the content. Using typefaces that are incompatible with each other. Using typefaces for subheads that don’t contrast well with the body text.

We could easily fill this entire page with warning signs, but these basic signs are enough for now.

SPECIAL READER TIP: Many people use the word font when what they really mean is typeface. As someone once said, “A typeface is what you see. A font is what you use.” When a designer professes love for the Roboto Condensed font, he probably really means he loves the Roboto Condensed typeface. He means that he loves the way Roboto Condensed looks on his web site. It’s unlikely that he loves the piece of software (the font) that causes Roboto Condensed letterforms to appear on his website.

How to Improve Our WordPress Typography

As more and more text has made its way online, we’ve lost the ability to control the look and feel of our text (otherwise known as type). One reason for this is the lack of precise typographic controls in web browsers, CSS, HTML, etc.

Compared to page-layout programs, our web-design tools (including WordPress) are rudimentary, and just don’t have the necessary controls to adjust the look and feel of type the way applications such as Adobe InDesign and Adobe Illustrator can. Using either of those two applications, print designers can easily control kerning and tons of other typographical niceties right down to the nth degree.

But WordPress designers? Not even close. Not yet, anyway. Yes, we can easily add some color to our WordPress text, and we can even get “really rad” by adding fonts that aren’t included with our themes – but we’re probably going to look a very long time before we find a Kern button or a Track button in our WordPress dashboards.

Software is Only Part of the Problem

Good print designers think about typography a lot, and know that type is more than just words on a page – and they work at getting the most out of their type. But the majority of WordPress designers don’t have much experience with setting type for print, so all too often our WordPress type doesn’t look as good as it should.

Most of us WordPress designers create a site something like this: We choose and set up a theme, start a post or a page, enter a page title, enter the main text (by typing or by importing), apply a style to the subheads, apply some simple formatting to a few phrases (bold or italic), plug in some graphics – repeat the process for more pages and posts – and think we’re done.

This doesn’t mean that we don’t care about design. Most of us do care a lot about the look of our sites, and we put in a lot of time and effort looking for the perfect theme, the just-right color scheme, the placement of elements on the page, and a lot more.

It’s great that WordPress designers pay attention to these things, and strive to provide good content, but when we don’t pay attention to typography, we’re leaving money on the table.

What Do Smart WordPress Designers Do?

Smart WordPress designers who realize the importance of typography can jump several steps ahead of other designers by using some of the available typography plugins, scripts, specialized fonts, and other assorted online resources.

None of the things we’re going to look at here will turn anyone into a typographer – it takes a lot of time and effort before that happens – but some of these resources will definitely make your WordPress web sites look better and more professional, without a lot of effort.

OpenType Web Fonts

One of the best (and relatively simple) ways to ramp up your typography is to start using web fonts in the OpenType format.

OpenType isn’t new in the print world, but it’s only recently making a splash in online typography. Plugins, scripts, and other things we’ve mentioned can help, but OpenType really opens things up.

For one thing, OpenType fonts are easy to manage, since peripheral files are a thing of the past: An OpenType file (you can call it a font) may include up to 65,535 characters or glyphs. Standard fonts such as TrueType? Also a lot, but OpenType makes things easier.

While designers once needed several files (multiple fonts) in order to access some of the special characters and font sets, OpenType does it all with one font file. Does anyone really need 65,535 characters in one font? Yes. Or maybe. OK, not really.

But when we start thinking about all the variants such as true small caps, ligatures, alternate characters, swashes, accented characters, borders, alternative figures, ornaments, and real fractions – it becomes obvious that having a huge number of characters available (and easily accessible) is a really good thing.

And let’s not forget that OpenType keeps all the other good stuff together in just that one file: Metrics, kerning tables, outline hints, and bitmaps. Much easier to work with. This is a major big deal, and if you really want to come as close as possible to pixel-perfect type, OpenType is the way to go.

SPECIAL READER TIP: Wondering what a glyph is? In typography, a glyph refers to a graphic symbol that provides the appearance or form for a character. In other words, for our purposes, a glyph would typically be a character in a font. The word often comes into play while working with alternate characters in a font. The graphic at right shows just a few of the possibly thousands of glyphs available in a particular font – including some alternate characters.

Typography on the Brain

The best page designers, going all the way back to mediaeval scribes copying The Book of Kells by hand (and even centuries before that), have paid close attention to the art of typography. And we should, too.

While it’s not necessary for us to devote our lives to the study and practice of typography, we can improve the look and feel of our websites, and increase the power of our text by thinking more about typography and by trying some of the resources mentioned here.

Typography is a huge topic – there are thousands of books written entirely about typography – and we’ve only looked at a small part the subject here. In future posts we hope to cover even more ways to put typographic knowledge and skill to work on every website we create.

Meanwhile, we can all start to notice typography wherever we are – especially on the Internet – and realize that with a little bit of extra effort we can transform our type, and take our WordPress sites to the next level of quality.

Image credit: Paul Downey, Berkhamsted, UK.

To understand upstart social network Ello, which burst into the spotlight this week — growing from just 90 members in August to a reported 30,000 new users per hour— let’s start with its manifesto:

Your social network is owned by advertisers.

Every post you share, every friend you make and every link you follow is tracked, recorded and converted into data. Advertisers buy your data so they can show you more ads. You are the product that’s bought and sold.

We believe there is a better way…We believe a social network can be a tool for empowerment. Not a tool to deceive, coerce and manipulate—but a place to connect, create and celebrate life.

Even if you’re cheering for this phenomenon as a social media user, the view from inside any business that relies on social media advertising may be less enthusiastic.

Businesses need to take Ello and its manifesto as a wake-up call to rethink the way they use social networks to reach customers. The intense interest and discussion engendered by this manifesto attests to the profound misgivings many of those customers now have about the networks that occupy a growing place our work, our relationships and our lives.

Those misgivings are evident in the sign-ups for networks like Ello and Diaspora; in the emergence of anonymous, private and non-persistent platforms like Secret and WhatsApp; and in the growing number of Internet users who report taking steps to obscure their digital footprint.

We While we have a long way to go before Ello and its ilk pose a significant threat to established players like Facebook and Twitter — if they ever get there. But companies still need to pay attention to the growing public discomfort with advertiser dominance and algorithm-driven user experiences. As Internet users are growing uncomfortable with the now-established model of “you get free social networking, we get your data and eyeballs,” businesses need to do more than tinker with their social media strategies: they need to rethink their core approach to social media itself.

That means stepping back from the relentless quest for followers, clicks, and mentions, and instead thinking about why brands got involved in social media in the first place. In its early days, the promise of the social web lay in the ability of companies to have direct and ongoing relationships with their customers — to become more responsive, more accountable and more attuned to the things their customers really cared about. Instead, companies have found a world in which their old intermediaries (broadcasters, publishers, journalists) have simply been replaced by a new set of intermediaries (social networks, bloggers).

This shift provides companies with a chance to rethink their own use of the social web; the smart ones will seize this opportunity to forge a new kind of relationship with their customers.

But because any successful relationship has to be built on trust, companies will have to begin by addressing the trust gap that has emerged out of the past five or ten years of social media marketing — a trust gap that is clearly conveyed in the Ello manifesto. That gap is about more than privacy or invasive ads: it reflects the frustration with the steady commercialization of our online interactions and spaces. Instead of elbowing their way into Ello with branded accounts and “content” that takes the place of ads, companies need to recognize that our online world needs non-commercial spaces as well as ad-friendly networks, just as the offline world has room for both libraries and bookstores. Instead of relying on algorithms and ad targeting to get dollars out of their customers’ wallets, companies need to think about the value they can offer to their customers’ online lives.

Just because advertisers are unwelcome on some parts of the social web, that doesn’t mean businessesare necessarily unwelcome, though: consumers simply want businesses to engage with them in some way that goes beyond a pitch. That could mean inviting customers into your product development process through co-creation. It could involve convening meaningful conversations on topics that resonate with your customers and your brand. It could look like partnering with your customers to make the products they want, or offer the services they need, or help them sell their stuff to other people like them. Allof these are ways to engage with your customers that align with the spirit of the social web, instead of treating it as a billboard.

But you’re not going to get that kind of engagement by moseying up to the social media drive-thru and asking for a double order of customer engagement, please. You can’t leave it to the established social networks to create the platform that helps you connect with your customers; you need to find a way to convene the conversations you want, in a context that will actually work for both you and the customers you serve. And as the sudden rise of Ello suggests, that will probably need to be a context in which your customers feel like you are treating both their data and their attention with the greatest respect.

And you can begin with your own version of the Ello manifesto:

Your customer relationships are owned by other companies — companies like Facebook, Twitter and Google.

Every interaction you have, every customer you acquire and every ad you place is tracked, recorded and converted into data that can serve your competitors — or the social network itself. You dedicate your ad dollars, your customer relations team and your very best content creators to building a social network that somebody else controls. You are the customer, but your own customers are the product that is bought and sold. 

We believe there is a better way…We believe the social web can be a tool for customer engagement. Not a tool to deceive, coerce and manipulate — but a place to connect, create and celebrate what we can do together.

When you’re racing 90 miles an hour, the last thing you want to do is slow down.

That’s how it feels on those exhilarating days when you’re completely focused, tearing through your to-do list, racking up accomplishments. You just want to keep going.

You might also worry that if you take a break, you’ll lose momentum and find it impossible to regain your stride.

But the research tells us otherwise. Studies show we have a limited capacity for concentrating over extended time periods, and though we may not be practiced at recognizing the symptoms of fatigue, they unavoidably derail our work. No matter how engaged we are in an activity, our brains inevitably tire. And when they do, the symptoms are not necessarily obvious. We don’t always yawn or feel ourselves nodding off. Instead, we become more vulnerable to distractions.

Consider what happens over the course of a typical day at the office. The early morning hours are when most of us are at our sharpest, but as the day wears on, we inevitably lose steam. And it’s at this point that we become more easily seduced by the lure of viral videos, celebrity gossip, and social media. A recent study examined the time of day Facebook users are more likely to post updates. The finding? Facebook usage builds from 9:00 AM through noon, dips slightly during lunch, and then peaks at 3:00 PM, the precise hour when many of us are at our most fatigued.

While tiring over the course of the workday can’t be prevented, it can be mitigated. Studies show that sporadic breaks replenish our energy, improve self-control and decision-making, and fuel productivity. Depending on how we spend them, breaks can also heighten our attention and make us more creative.

A 2011 study published in Cognition highlights another upside to sporadic breaks that we rarely consider: goal reactivation. When you work on a task continuously, it’s easy to lose focus and get lost in the weeds. In contrast, following a brief intermission, picking up where you left off forces you to take a few seconds to think globally about what you’re ultimately trying to achieve. It’s a practice that encourages us to stay mindful of our objectives, and, as the authors of the study report, reliably contributes to better performance.

The challenge, of course, is finding the time to step away for 15 minutes, or—even when we have the time—getting good at dragging ourselves away from our computers preemptively, before we’re depleted. One approach that can help involves blocking out a couple of planned 15-minute intermissions on your calendar, one in the mid-morning and the other in the mid-afternoon.

Next, find something active you can do with this time and put it on your calendar. Take a walk, stretch while listening to a song, or go out with a coworker for a snack. If these activities strike you as too passive, use the time to run an errand. The critical thing is to step away from your computer so that your focus is relaxed and your mind drifts. (So no, checking Facebook does not count.)

Finally, note your energy level when you return. You are bound to feel invigorated, both because you’ve allowed your brain some rest and because the physical movement has elevated your heart rate.

If this feels like a dereliction of duty, remind yourself that the human brain was not built for extended focus. Through much of our evolutionary history, heightened concentration was needed in short bursts, not daylong marathons. Our minds evolved to snap to attention when we encountered a predator, keeping us vigilant just long enough to ensure our survival. Yet today, we expect far more from ourselves than centuries of evolution have designed us to do.

Ultimately, the question we should be asking is not whether breaks are worth taking – we know they are. It’s how we can better ensure that they actually take place.

Want to draw readers in, with animated and interactive content? While this used to be the domain of Flash – resulting in a lot of load time and potential compatibility issues – HTML5 has fast become the dominant method for creating animated and interactive web content.

Of course, not everyone has the time or skills to code HTML5 content; if you’re one of those people, maybe HTML5Maker is something you should try.

HTML5Maker is an online, cloud-hosted web application that can be used to very easily design animated and interactive HTML5 content. What’s more, HTML5Maker also helps you host your HTML5 content on the cloud, so you just need to focus on creating your interactive, animated slides. Let’s take a look at HTML5Maker.

Recommended Reading: HTML5 Website Showcase: 48 Potential Flash-Killing Demos

Getting Started with HTML5Maker

You can immediately start working on a HTML5 animation without registering (just click on Create Animation) but if you register, you get to save your animations.

Creating a new account is simple; just pick your pricing plan and then sign up with Facebook or Google, or create a new account. Once you’re registered, you’ll be taken to your dashboard, where you can manage your animations, change your subscription plan and password.

Adding Slides, Text And Images

To create a new animation, click on the big orange Create Animation button to go straight to the actual HTML5 creation interface.

Basically, your working canvas is a three-column interface: slides are on the left, the slide view is in the middle and the right column shows Image Properties, Text Properties or Canvas Properties (default) – the right column will switch to image or text properties when you’re adding or editing an image or text.

You can also manually switch between these three properties with the buttons above the slide display.

Adding Slides

If you have used PowerPoint before, HTML5Maker works the same way with slides. Click the Add New Slide button to add a new slide. You can also duplicate and delete slides, set the duration for each slide as well as set the overlap time in between slides.

Adding Images

Clicking on Add Image will bring up the add image interface. You can choose from a large variety of images, from beautiful photographs to design elements to icons, flags and backgrounds. And, if none of these fit the bill, you can also upload your own images.

Once you’ve found an image you like, mouse over it and click on Add. The image will be added to the slide, and you can then reposition and resize the image as you see fit.

To resize or rotate the image, you need to go to Image Properties, alongside other options like changing the opacity, replacing or modifying the image.

Clicking on Replace simply opens the image selection window again. Clicking on Modify will open HTML5Maker’s image editor.

In the Image Editor section, you can perform basic image editing such as cropping, blurring and adjusting contrast. You can also apply filters and overlays as well as add text and frames.

Lastly, you can choose the image’s Appear and Disappear effects. There are a number of different fade in and fade out styles to choose from, and you can even enable an Advanced Mode that lets you set the duration of these fades.

Adding Text

Click the Add Text button and a text box will appear on your slide. You can rotate and change the text directly from the slide, or check out more options in the Text Properties sidebar. Choose a font, font size or color, enable text background, tweak formatting options, set the size and text position, add drop or inner shadows or add in a text link to sites or slides here.

Canvas Properties, Previewing And Publishing

You can change the size of your canvas, from a number of presets or a custom canvas size. There are also a few options that you can enable or disable, such as Autoplay, Pause on MouseOver and Responsive animation.

Animation Controls opens up a new window where you can choose Slider Options for your animation. You can add controls to play, pause, move from one slide to the next, use a timer progress bar and more. Each type of slider or control has a number of options for you to tweak, including size, icon type, color, opacity and so on.

Previewing And Publishing

HTML5Maker has two preview options: you can either preview the current slide or preview your entire animation. Once you’re happy with things, click the big orange Publish button at the top right of the screen. Save your animation as HTML5 or Flash.

A saved animation can be accessed from the dashboard. You can also find more options there to embed or share your animation.

Conclusion

HTML5Maker has good number of pricing tiers to suit any budget. There is a free account, but you’re limited to only saving one animation with that, and you have to have an HTML5Maker watermark in your animation.

The paid plans range from $4.99 – $49.99 a month – the price increases with the animation limits (up to 100 for the $49.99/month plan) – and guarantee 99.9% uptime and give you access to premium professional templates.

All in all, HTML5Maker is a great tool if you don’t have the know-how to code HTML5 yourself, yet want to take advantage of interactive and responsive animations HTML5 can afford your website. While HTML5Maker probably isn’t geared for complex HTML5 content – like, for instance, music website Pitchfork’s Cover Stories series – it’s still a capable tool and should fulfill most users’ needs.

You’ve heard the numbers: 25 million SMBs have Pages on Facebook. A majority of Facebook’s million advertisers are SMBs. Clearly the company has a major opportunity in these numbers.

The question is: how much energy, effort and resources need to be expended to develop it? So far Facebook has decided against pursuing the company has shunned a Google-like reseller strategy.

This morning Facebook is instead the company is announcing a road show, called Facebook Fit Boot Camp (“get your business in shape”). Together with Square, Legal Zoom and Intuit, Facebook will be touring five cities in an effort to directly reach SMBs.

The cities are New York, Miami, Austin, Chicago and Menlo Park (CA). The tour starts in early June and concludes in August in California. There will be two identical five-hour seminars seminars will be a half day and the company will do two “shows” each day. The registration fee is $25 but Facebook will be giving away $50 in advertising credit (+ schwag).

After a general session There will be three Facebook-related workshops sessions running concurrently: Facebook for beginners, a how-to session for those trying to drive store visits and another for those trying to sell online. SMBs will also attend one session from one of the Facebook’s three partners.

I was told the emphasis in the Facebook sessions will be very practical and hands-on. practical. Square, Legal Zoom and Intuit are there to provide information about SMB-related and answer questions about legal issues, accounting and finance (and sell their services and products). Their presence arguably provides broader appeal, though Facebook is the headliner.

finance.

Facebook’s Dan Levy will be the event’s MC and moderator.

There are also two “entrepreneurial experts” speaking as well.The seminars have capacity

Facebook is hoping to both educate and listen to SMBs. The company hopes to address about 800 business owners in each city (first come, first served). The sessions will also be recorded and so have the potential to reach a broader audience that way. Assume that if these sessions go well that Facebook will expand the roadshow to other cities.

Large numbers of SMBs say they’re “on Facebook” — 50% to more than 75% depending on the survey — but that social media presence may not be very effective. Data from Radius reflects that about 26% of Facebook’s reported 25 million SMB Pages are in the US.

The summer roadshow is It’s a smart move and will offer invaluable “learnings” for Facebook. the company. How far it will go in getting more SMB advertisers on board is an open question.

We can probably assume, however, However we can assume this is just the first of many more direct Facebook outreach efforts to local businesses.