Observations on Font Pairings for 2016

Here are a couple pages with a bunch of interesting typeface pairings.

But first, a couple comments.

Body copy on the web used to be presented predominantly in sans serif fonts because on 72dpi 1024 x 768 screens it was a lot easier to read. Nowadays with the advent of retina screens and 1900px monitors it's not such a problem to read serif type on screen. Here... this is Georgia and it looks pretty nice, eh? It's one of my all time favorites. Like the blues, I just never get tired of it.

These days, top designers are using serif fonts for body copy. Look at http://www.wired.com/2016/02/zika-conspiracy-theories/

and at https://stuffandnonsense.co.uk/process

Personally, I am not a fan. I like sans serif type for body copy. I also don't like the current flat design trends. But, I think in order to look modern and professional it's important to follow these trends.

So, here are a couple pages with a bunch of nice Google font combinations.

This first one is really nice. Each pairing gets it's own mini-design. Look for the one about the fox and the grapes, and notice your cursor. Click on the grapes?

http://femmebot.github.io/google-type/

The next one only has a few, and much more simply and directly presented.

http://briangardner.com/google-font-combinations/



I looked at a bunch of magazines in my reading pile and they seemed to be split between serif and sans for body copy. Some even had a mix of types in different articles.

Another thing to consider is that it's not just about headlines and body copy. There are also captions (where sans still makes a lot of sense) sidebars, callouts and other elements which might not strictly follow the rule of Header & Body. The choices you make for these other elements can add a lot of polish to your design.



There, those are my thoughts on types of type.

Chrome Support for Vista and XP Ends April 16 2016: Windows XP and Windows Vista will no longer be supported

Chrome Support for Vista and XP Ends April 16 2016

Users of Google Chrome are greeted with this statement when they fire up Chrome these days: "This computer will soon stop receiving Google Chrome Updates because Windows XP and Windows Vista will no longer be supported"

Oh my god! What do I do?

This page describes a method to disable "the ending support for XP" messages:

http://forum.piriform.com/index.php?showtopic=45591

Firefox support for XP seems to be ongoing. I use Firefox all day, every day, and all websites work with Firefox.
The Opera browser may also be an alternative.

I recommend Linux Mint XFCE 17.3 (Linux Mint home page for more info) for people wanting to switch to a modern OS. My mom uses it, so it's not hard to use. But it won't run iTunes, or Photoshop, or Quickbooks, though a person may find that the Linux media players, image editors, and accounting programs, OR a similar functioning website will work for them. It runs pretty fast on a Pentium 4 desktop with 512 MB of RAM.

If you need to use a special Windows XP application, you could run it in a Virtual Machine in your shiny, new, modern Linux Mint OS. Look up Virtual Box. This would allow you to start Windows XP in a window and run your special program in that window. I started doing this when Vista came out and my Quickbooks version wouldn't run on Vista. I fire up my XP machine, the window pops up with the Win XP login. I log in, and run quickbooks in that window. I never use the browser in that window, or any other programs.

I think it's really stupid that companies are discontinuing support for these slightly older but still very powerful computing machines. I bought my first computer in 1994, and it had a whole 2 MB of RAM and it was a fast machine, a 486-dx66. I would have killed to be able to get a machine as powerful as my phone is. Now we have 2.5 GHz multicore computers that are so obsolete that we are supposed to just throw them away? My Core 2 Duo laptop can't be updated to Win 10, or Win 8 because there are no drivers for the hardware.