I give talks on web ty­pog­ra­phy and web de­vel­op­ment all over the world. Are you in­ter­ested in a talk about web ty­pog­ra­phy or web de­vel­op­ment at your con­fer­ence or meetup? Send me an email and let’s talk.

In­vite me to speak at your con­fer­ence or meetup

Are variable fonts the future of web typography?

You may have heard about vari­able fonts and how amaz­ing they are. But what ex­actly are vari­able fonts, and why are so many peo­ple ex­cited about them? Is it be­cause they of­fer ex­cit­ing new ways to an­i­mate type? Or to end­lessly tweak your ty­pog­ra­phy? Or are they the an­swer to all your web­font per­for­mance prob­lems? In this talk I ex­plore all these ques­tions and try to an­swer that ques­tion (hint: Yes!)

Pre­sented at the CSS Minks JS con­fer­ence (Minsk, Be­larus.)

Line Breaking, Justification, and Variable Fonts

I ex­plain how line break­ing and jus­ti­fi­ca­tion works, and how vari­able fonts will im­prove jus­ti­fied text even fur­ther.

Pre­sented at the Ro­bot­hon Con­fer­ence 2018 (The Hague, The Nether­lands.)

The Big Web Show podcast: Webfont Festival with Bram Stein

I join Jef­frey Zeld­man on the Big Web Show to talk about web fonts, font stacks, vari­able fonts, and of course my new book: the Web­font Hand­book.

You can lis­ten to the pod­cast on­line, or down­load the au­dio file.

Responsive Web Design podcast: Variable Fonts

My col­league Tim Brown and I joined Ethan Mar­cotte on the Re­spon­sive Web De­sign pod­cast to talk about vari­able fonts. We talked about what vari­able fonts are, and how they will af­fect re­spon­sive de­sign and web per­for­mance.

You can lis­ten to the pod­cast, or read the tran­script.

The Science of Typography

This is a weird talk. You’ve prob­a­bly all seen au­to­mated “de­sign” soft­ware and al­go­rithms come and go. They promise the sky but of­ten re­strict you and pro­duce bland and generic re­sults. Should you not use such soft­ware at all? What if there are tools that analyse and guide you to cre­ate bet­ter de­signs? This talk will ex­plore ty­po­graphic analy­sis and what we as de­sign­ers can learn from math and com­puter sci­ence.

I gave this talk at the fol­low­ing con­fer­ences:

• De­sign It; Build it: Edinburgh, Scotland (2017).
• One Day Out: Odense, Denmark (2016).
• Ds­gn­day con­fer­ence: Amsterdam, the Netherlands (2015).

Web Fonts Performance

Web fonts are great. They are also be re­ally bad for front-end per­for­mance be­cause they block ren­der­ing. You may have ex­pe­ri­enced this on a slow cel­lu­lar net­work. Star­ing at a blank page is no fun, es­pe­cially when the con­tent has al­ready loaded.

This talk ex­plores why browsers have placed fonts on the crit­i­cal path, and how we can work around this while still de­liv­er­ing a good user ex­pe­ri­ence. It also takes a look at what the fu­ture will bring to web font per­for­mance: pre­load­ing hints, the font-dis­play prop­erty, and HTTP/2.

I gave this talk at the fol­low­ing con­fer­ences:

• Fron­teers: Amsterdam, the Netherlands (2016).
• AtThe­Fron­tend: Copenhagen, Denmark (2016).
• Web­De­v­Con: Seattle, United States (2016).
• Smash­ing Conf: Freiburg, Germany (2015).

The Consequences of Web Fonts

In the last few years the num­ber of sites us­ing web fonts has soared. Un­for­tu­nately the de­fault be­hav­iour of most browsers is to hide text while down­load­ing fonts. This talk ex­plores how to em­brace the Flash Of Un­styled Text (FOUT) and avoid the dev­as­tat­ing ef­fects of the Flash Of In­vis­i­ble Text (FOIT).

I gave this talk at UX Mu­nich 2015 in Mu­nich, Ger­many.

The State of Web Type

In this talk I ex­plore ad­vanced web ty­pog­ra­phy us­ing CSS, HTML, and JavaScript poly­fills. It dives deep into the cur­rent state of browser sup­port for kern­ing, hy­phen­ation, jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, and Open­Type fea­tures. The talk pro­vides an overview of new ty­po­graphic CSS fea­tures, how to use them, and when to ex­pect them.

I gave this talk at the fol­low­ing con­fer­ences:

• Adobe MAX: Los Angeles, United States (2014).
• Web Font Day: Munich, Germany (2014).
• CSS­Conf EU: Berlin, Germany (2014).

This talk re­sulted in the cre­ation of the State Of Web Type.

Type Rendering

What is in a web font? Find out how it af­fects type ren­der­ing on dif­fer­ent browsers and plat­forms, and how you can use that knowl­edge to choose ap­pro­pri­ate type­faces.

I gave this talk at the Lat55 meetup, in Malmö, Swe­den.