Butterick’s Practical Typhography is a free book on typography that will make you a better designer of documents, web pages, and more.
To navigate all you have to do is scroll down the page and click into the sections that interest you. Everyone should start out in Typography in Ten Minutes though. It’s a great introduction to the site and provides you with five key rules that you need to know to create awesome things!
There is an option to pay for the book, though it’s not required. If you click on ‘Please pay for this book,’ you’ll see an explanation of why you might want to help out and options to voluntarily contribute or buy a font package from the author.
I used this site to help design my Curriculum Vitae for Ph.D applications. I may even apply some of these tenets to my writing sample and statement provided the application doesn’t have it’s own requirements. But you can totally use this information to design invitations, menus, books, websites, and more!
After you’ve checked out the Typography in Ten Minutes section, you can stop there or you can really delve into the subject and read the other sections of the book.
The Summary of the Key Rules section breaks down into 26 specific things that you can do to really improve the look of your product. The Introduction offers some insight into how to use the rest (more in-depth sections) of the book.
You can navigate through the book from either main page or you can use the navigation menu at the bottom of each page to leaf through as you would normally read a book; the top button will return you to the index.
I really found the discussion about Font Basics to be really helpful. So definitely check that section out. And remember there are lots of free font resources out there that can help you get a more professional font than the default ones that came on your machine. (And the author does comment on not using free fonts, but I really disagree, they’re perfectly acceptable for most people uses. A professional writer may want to invest in a licensed font, but it’s not necessary for everyone else). Plus, helpful instructions on how to download and install fonts. What you do get from those pages, are some really cool font comparisons that are pretty nifty to look at.
I also really enjoyed the page layout section and picked up quite a few tips that are going to be helpful in the future.
This is a really cool site on typography, go check it out today!
http://practicaltypography.com/
~Amanda