Welcome to the final stop on our international tour with guests from across the pond (and the final episode of 2024!). We’re headed to Austria to speak with user interface and app designer and fellow type geek, Oliver Schöndorfer.
He’s baaaaaack! Pimp My Type in the house!
Oliver runs his design business by day, and is a typography YouTuber by night. Oliver’s vision is to make the world more beautiful and diverse through typography. He shares his knowledge and passion in a weekly newsletter, online course, speaks at conferences and podcasts, gives workshops, and most of all on the YouTube channel “Pimp my Type”.
In this conversation about web typography, you’ll learn LOTS, including:
How Oliver defines web typography
Web font hierarchy
The ins and outs of choosing a typeface for the web
The difference between ‘web fonts’ and ‘web safe fonts’
A brief history of web typography
The crossovers between typography for print and typography for the web
The way that screen size plays a role in setting type
Why variable fonts are a game-changer for the web, including how optical sizing works
Best practices for accessible web typography
The difference between absolute and relative units and why this matters
Why we shouldn’t trust AI-generated type (yet)
Why good typography can’t save you if you don’t first consider hierarchy
And finally, Oliver indulges Diana’s improv game to summarize key takeaways about web typography in to a dessert metaphor (yum!)
I encourage you to check out my two previous episodes with Oliver, Episode 134: Pairing Type with Oliver of Pimp My Type and Episode 156: Untapped Typography Potential with Oliver of Pimp My Type.
Relevant Links:
Six things to consider before changing fonts on a website (where I show the adjustment of the variable font for high-density screens)
Font Review: Newsreader (Optical sizing)
Also, as a side note… Just before I hit record Oliver and I were chatting about family life, kids getting older and finding balance in the chaos. Which is why our conversation starts out this way…
Let’s listen in…
About Our Guest:
Oliver Schöndorfer is a typography expert, freelance UI & app designer, and YouTuber. His channel Pimp my Type and weekly Font Friday Newsletter inspire a global audience to leverage the power of typography.
Social Handles
YouTube: @pimpmytpe
Instagram: @pimp_my_type
LinkedIn: @Oliver Schöndorfer
TikTok: @pimpmytype
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Music:
Weird Science - John Bartmann licensed under a CC0 1.0 Universal License
Talk Paper Scissors Theme Music: Retro Quirky Upbeat Funk by Lewis Sound Production via Audio Jungle