Multilingual Typesetting on the Web

Typesetting different languages together can be a challenge for online projects. This 2-day intensive will review HTML and CSS techniques on formatting typography for multiple scripts, especially with East Asian languages. We will begin with the basics of using web fonts, including an understanding of glyph subsets and fallbacks, and move to advanced techniques in refining typography for language-specific design conventions such as vertical typesetting. Participants will need no prior knowledge of these languages for this workshop but should be prepared to dive into code. Because the presenter’s language expertise is in English and Japanese, some examples will be based on these two scripts but technical concepts may be applied to other languages. Participants should bring their own web project with their preferred languages to apply learnings from the workshop.

Learning Outcomes

• Markup text on a webpage using HTML and understand the browser’s default typographic behavior
• Load and use webfonts, including the techniques and complexities in specifying which typefaces to use for which scripts
• Control typographic layout on a webpage using CSS
• Refine typographic details by accessing a typeface’s layout features
• Explore the range of approaches for multilingual typography on the web

Required Materials

• Please bring your laptop and some text, in two or more languages, for which you would like to create a website.