The Greatest Tools Ever for Superior Website Typography

Superior website typography doesn't happen by accident. Web designers don't just, by happenstance, choose typeface that provides readability, legibility and aesthetic features to site visitors. Rather, typography to write home about takes a lot of planning, decision-making and ruminating on what constitutes great type!

Even if you're the best web designer ever (or just think you are!), you can't well select amazing typeface all by your lonesome. We wish it was that easy! You need help that goes beyond just mere modern CSS techniques and widely available web fonts though both are certainly a big assistance to designers everywhere.

No,what you need is a highly valuable roundup of some of the best tools for typography that you'll discover on the Internet. The next time you're facing adversity in choosing great type, just look to these resources for inspiration!

• Typography Sketchbooks
• Thinking with Type
• Typography Workbook
• Little Book of Lettering
• Typography Essentials: 100 Design Principles for Working with Type
• The Elements of Typographic Style
• Designing with Type
• Type Rules!: The Designer's Guide to Professional Typography
• The Anatomy of Type

TypeWonder

When you're designing, you always have to test things out on the website that you're building because you want to perform quality control. In dealing with typeface, you'll naturally want to test out as many web fonts as possible on any website. Well, TypeWonder just happens to make this a reality in a seamless, easy process.

All it demands is you typing in the URL of the site in question and then hitting the site's "Go" button. You then get to select your font-of-choice from hundreds and hundreds of fonts that you can also preview in an instant. Finally, once you've selected the font you fell in love with, the site spits out the requisite code of the font that you'll embed onto your site.

Typewolf

Ever heard of Typewolf? If you haven't but need some typeface inspiration for your site, then it's in your best interest to check out Typewolf. A curated design showcase, the site specializes in identifying fonts utilized in design. It's literally a one-stop resource for designers who are looking for typography inspiration on the Internet.

When you look through the wonderful pages of the site, you immediately see that its creator isn't kidding about design inspiration! You get to see typeface from various sites in all their glory, together with a very convenient and thoughtful list of the different fonts used on each site!

Typechart

This typography site's motto is "Browse Web Type. Grab CSS." Sounds simple enough, right? And it is. This typography tool is absolutely ideal for CSS developers because it allows them to easily match a certain type of font to a web project they're working on. In addition, it also lets them download the correct CSS code, thereby making everything efficient!

For instance, let's say you like a particular font in Cambria? What's that? Now you're not sure? Okay - how about Arial instead? Not a problem! Typechart has you covered because, as soon as you commit yourself to a font that you enjoy, you can press the accessible "Get CSS" button to get the code.

CSS Type Set

Sometimes, web designers just need to save time and don't have the patience to do things all by themselves. In these cases where time is of the essence, you can always rely on CSS Type Set, but beware: It can turn into a tool that you over-rely on in the long run. This is because it's super-addictive and tempting to simply have the site come up with the necessary CSS code based on the exact font properties that you want.

However, the downside of this excessively handy tool is that designers obviously will not be able to eventually master any CSS properties on their own - which they should since they should want to become better designers who won't have to use a convenient tool like this as a crutch. Yet if you really need to save time, then CSS Type Set is the way to go, but only from time to time!

Tiff

One of the more popular typography resources on the world wide web, Tiff allows web designers to compare two distinct fonts and instantly see the differences between them. This is beyond essential because subtle differences between fonts can be hard to spot if you don't see them right on top of each other.

At the moment, Tiff supports both fonts that come from Google's Web Fonts Library and all system fonts. You're also advised to view the site only on the latest versions of modern browsers for the best results.

Using the site is as easy as typing in font A - let's say Georgia - and typing in font B. Let's say Arial. The site will actually overlie the fonts, so that designers can notice the subtlest differences like the presence or absence of serifs to even the lengths between serifs!

Make Your Typography Life More Efficient

Those in the know are aware that typography makes up 95% of web design. In short, it will pay off big time if you devote considerable time and attention to picking fonts for your website that help to increase the user experience. This will include factors from readability and legibility to aestheticism in how it looks on the actual screen.

With the abovementioned tools, you can rest easy that you have all the resources that you need to make a more educated choice of typeface for your website.

What's your experience like with typeface? Do you put little emphasis on it, or do you live and breathe the reality that typography is really the most important aspect of web design? Whatever the case is, just tell us all about your preference in the comments section below!