Typography and the Web
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Type: Writing and Research
Organization: Journal of Visual Culture, Google Design, and HTTP Archive
Dates: 2014-26
Topics: Typography, Web fonts, Media history, HTTP Archive

Summary
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Research and writing on type as both cultural form and technical infrastructure, from the history of Impact to web fonts measured across millions of sites.

Project Notes
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My writing about typography follows type across several scales: the history of a single face, the choices built into a font file, and the aggregate behavior of millions of websites. The methods change with the scale, from archival and interview research to technical explanation and empirical analysis.

With Kate Brideau, I traced Impact from metal type through its inclusion in Microsoft's core fonts for the web to its role as a default in meme generators. The article argues that standards and constraints do not merely make images repetitive. They create a recognizable form within which small changes can become legible.

For Google Design, I wrote an introductory guide to choosing web fonts. For the HTTP Archive's Web Almanac, I co-wrote the 2024 Fonts chapter with Bram Stein and wrote the 2025 chapter, published in January 2026. Those reports measure the use of web fonts, formats, delivery methods, variable fonts, and writing systems at the scale of the public web. Together, the projects treat typography as something people read, software executes, and culture makes meaningful.

Original and Related Work
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Web Almanac Fonts 2025
  Read the 2025 analysis of web-font formats, loading behavior, variable fonts, and typography trends.
  https://almanac.httparchive.org/en/2025/fonts
Web Almanac Fonts 2024
  Read the 2024 data chapter on how fonts are selected, delivered, and rendered across the web.
  https://almanac.httparchive.org/en/2024/fonts
Impact, the meme font
  Open the full Journal of Visual Culture article on Impact's history and use in image macros.
  https://charlesberret.net/shared/2014-berret-brideau-jvc-impact.pdf
Impact article DOI
  Open the persistent publication record and citation details for the Impact article.
  https://doi.org/10.1177/1470412914544515
Choosing Web Fonts
  Read a practical Google Design guide to evaluating and choosing typefaces for web projects.
  https://design.google/library/choosing-web-fonts-beginners-guide

Canonical page: https://charlesberret.net/projects/#typography-and-the-web
Plaintext: https://charlesberret.net/projects/typography-and-the-web.txt