Contents
[ hide ]
Web Design Financial Times Style
As we showed, you can take a Financial Times look with just a few lines of code to style your site like the famous newspaper.
The Financial Times Look
For best view, click on the picture below and then again in the new browser window.
Financial Times Look
The Problem with Cloning written Press
Fonts
Written Press follows other styling rules than web sites namely in as much as fonts are concerned. On paper, serif fonts are often better readable than sans-serif fonts, at least that’s what studies seem to tell us. In as much as I am concerned, I think that sans-serf fonts are always easier to read than serifs.
To me it seems that serif is an old way to print as sans are very well rendered on all printed matters.
Nevertheless, serif inspires conservatism, solidity, tradition, while sans-serif fonts inspire more modernism, technicality, dynamic. While my generation may see things as just described, for the younger, serif may just be a decoration of the good old times. Graffiti type of fonts have replaced serif when it comes to these decorative strokes at the end of each font stroke.
Depending on the targeted audience, Times New roman or Georgia may correspond to the expectation of the audience: then just use it, making sure you select a font size which leaves your text readable with ease.
Font alignment
For the purpose of this exercise I have justified the font, which works well on the written press, namely with small font sizes. from far away justified alignment gives the site a crisp look. However, when you read the text you may notice the problems arising namely on small column width.
You have to compromise between look and readability.
Direction
Using justified text alignment gives automatically direction; no need vor vertical guide lines, separators or visible borders.
Layout
Newspaper formats are wide and high and they contain multiple topics on the front page. On the web, the screen size is our limit, the more that visitors don’t like to scroll. We have to limit the display to essentials, often just title, image thumb and excerpt.
The increased use of images (thumbnails big enough to be attractive) compensate for the lack of text content.
The ideal Layout
Beside the fact that layout is a matter of target audience and personal preferences, I would ideally design my “newspaper” with a slider for the main article section (featured articles) on top center of the site (Ajax or Flash) and with a grid layout layout displaying the last post from the main categories. In the sidebar then a collapsible index of the categories.
Ideally there would be a minimum of scrolling and the featured category block should have iPhone display format.
More time permitting with some code.
If you enjoyed reading the above, please consider following future tips and strategies by RSS reader, Email delivery, or Kindle subscription.
Author: Yorgo Nestoridis, Media Marketing & Publishing, Founder of YORGOO Publishing, YORGOO Press and Semiomantics.
One Comment
Hello there
some useful information here, a good read.
thanks.