212 Productions // HOME.

A running post and my notes on the development of this website, its aesthetics, and reasoning.

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Text, Font, and Typography

Let’s start short and simple. Text.

The most important part of any website is legibility first and foremost. So my website uses Black text and a White background to maximize legibility. It was a very easy decision to make.

Next is the Font. I vetoed everything besides a Sans-Serif font immediately. Script and ‘Handwritten’ websites are simply poor choices, and while Serif fonts are great for papers and legal documents; I believe that Sans-Serif fonts are best for websites for a number of reasons…

What is a Serif vs Sans-Serif?!

• A Serif font is a font such as Times New Roman or Georgia. It is typically characterized by ‘feet’ in the strokes and depth (thickness and thinness). Feet are great for the purpose of guiding the reader from one word to the next, and fluently across a ‘whole’ body of text. Making the font great for media such as Books, Newspapers, and Business Cards.

@~<:,ø¤º°`°º¤ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸…!

• Sans (i.e. Sans-Serif) means without! Sans-Serif fonts are pretty much ‘Without-Feet’, and generally have a uniform stroke and thickness. This creates a minimalist and approachable structure to the font, and translates “better” into the digital spaces. Most importantly in my opinion, is the font type’s translation onto smaller, or lower resolution screens.
  

1. Simplicity (and implementation)
   • Sans-Serif fonts have no ‘feet’ in their stroke, and translate better to small screens/resolutions.
2. Aging (well)
   • Different Sans-Serif fonts don’t* tend to move in and out of favorability the same way Serif fonts do amongst the general public.
3. Uniformity (and first impressions)
   • “The medium is the message” -Marshall McLuhan
   • Modern Device UI’s (especially mobile devices) tend to be set to a Sans-Serif font by default.
     • Deviating from the ‘Medium’ (the phone, the browser, etc.) makes the ‘Message’ (this website, its contents) rub against the grain. Not an ideal outcome.
4. “The Scroll”
   • Scrolling and skimming through a Sans-Serif page is effortless. And that’s critical! Low friction is the ultimate goal of “The Scroll”.
     • Not everything on the website is important to read. What matters is making what *is* important, easy to read! And there are better ways to do that on a website than a font.
       • I like to shape my text bodies in an F shape.

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Colors

I knew when I went into developing this website that I had 4 colors in mind

1. A base Snow tone
   • easy to read off of
   • slightly warm and complimentary to my accent and opposition colors
2. An Off-White or Cream to contrast the Snow tone
   • also easy to read off of
   • cool tone
     • +create borders and sections upon the base of Snow
3. An accent Mint tone
   • I really just love this sort of color. Many seem wary to use it and I took that as a challenge.
4. A Salmon or Coral, an opposition to the Mint Green
   • I also like this color, and wanted to feature a this and that aesthetic with the mint

Final Colors

I then had arrived at my final color palette. Sticking very closely to my initial vision of White, Mint, and Coral; I rounded out my other colors based upon Mint and Coral

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Why ASCII?

ASCII has aesthetic elements of old websites and the early internet that I am fond of. It is uncommon to see nowadays and challenged me to be creative in my implementation.

Some sources of inspiration:

• My favorite Destiny 2 Emblem (pictured above^)
• Marathon The Game (2026)
• F.D. Signifier’s code background/aesthetic
• Yuji Itadori – Jujutsu Kaisen