Tweaks

I have to admit that Tumblr has truly rekindled my interest in keeping a personal website. The ease of posting is a dream and despite a little clunkiness, updating the theme template is pretty painless. 

So today I spent the afternoon making a new theme where I could explore some HTML5 mark-up as well as some typographic ideas I’ve been wanting to try. Jeremy Keith’s HTML5 for Web Designers has been a trusty companion in this endeavor. Unfortunately my type treatments are more apparent on long-form text posts so I’ll have to see if I can drum up a few. 

Unlike the last design, this one eschews CSS3 @media queries in favor of a liquid design that just works at most any size. I also dug a bit further into Tumblr customization options to make this template a bit more complete. 

I’d also like to report that after several failed attempts, I finally found a nice serif typeface on Typekit. Le Monde Journal STD by by Porchez Typofonderie has just the feel I’ve been looking for—classical but beautifully readable on-screen. According to the Typekit summary:

Le Monde Journal is the typeface on which the entire Le Monde family is based. By definition, it is intended for newspaper use & at small sizes. This family was designed in 1994 as custom font for the French newspaper Le Monde. 

It may be out of fashion but it feels very fresh to me and has the appearance of a typeface designed specifically for the screen. Perhaps the font’s originally design characteristics which make it very readable at small sizes are equally advantageous on screen.

There are more tweaks I want to make, but for now this feels a lot more like me.