One of the things I love about being a typography nerd is that one can spend an inordinate amount of time fiddling with kerning, line-height, or even finding that perfect serif for long form reading. I’ve redesigned this site numerous times over the years, changing the layout in vast ways, as well as experimented with countless sans-serif, and serif fonts.
I’ve been truly happy over past six months with Palatino as the sole font on this site, but I decided the other day to try switching everything to just Baskerville. Baskerville is also a much beloved serif that ships with Mac OS X and iOS, and it also holds a place in my heart. I can’t say with certainty that I prefer it over Palatino, as the differences are more nuanced, and less black and white.
I believe it takes some time before one can come to truly appreciate a font, and this is why I decided today to leave Baskerville on this site for at least a week. I can’t say with certainty I will go back to Palatino, but I’m really starting to like it.
I have already tried adjusting the font size and line-height, as some of the settings I had for Palatino are non-optimal for Baskerville. We’ll see how things go over the course of the next week.