What this site is about

MeritWEB writes about what web design is doing right now, in the actual sites, typefaces and tools it is being done with.

The interesting part of a trend is never the trend. It is the specific thing that proves it: a page you can open, a face you can name, a browser release with a date on it. So every piece here is about something a reader can go and look up — a typeface with a designer’s name attached, a specification with a ship date, a product with a version history, an article with a publication behind it.

How it is arranged

Five sections. Type is the faces, who drew them and what they were drawn for. The Browser is features with ship dates, and what each one retired. Tools is the products the work is made in. Pages is sites worth reading as objects. In Print is the publications that set the terms.

The front page carries the handful of pieces worth reading first. Everything else is on the section pages, and the complete list is on the archive.

The name

The mark beside the name is a piece of type: a single sort, seen face on, with the nick on its left edge — the notch a compositor feels for in the dark to know the letter is the right way up.