Hi, I’m Jon.

I’m a designer and typographer. I co-founded Fontdeck, and help organisations like the BBC with web typography. I design products, interfaces, and branding from Mild Bunch HQ, the co-working studio I founded in Bristol, UK. Sometimes, I’m lucky enough to write for design publications like Typographica, and talk at conferences like An Event Apart.

I’m a member of the International Society of Typographic Designers. My work and prose has featured in publications like I Love Typography, 8 Faces, .Net magazine, The Manual, and in books like Hardboiled Web Design (Five Simple Steps), Fluid Web Typography (New Riders), and The Principles Of Beautiful Web Design (SitePoint).

If there is anything more you wish to know after all that rather formal (and uncomfortably narcissistic-feeling) blurb, you may wish to read more human prose in the form of my personal note or Seven Things log entry.

Upcoming talks:

• Ready to Inspire. 10–12 Jun, 2014, in Leiden, The Netherlands.
• WXG. 24 Sep, 2014, at G Live in Guildford, UK.
• An Event Apart, Disney World (Special Edition). 27–29 Oct, 2014, at Disney’s Contemporary Resort, Orlando, Florida, USA.

Previous talks:

• An Event Apart, San Diego. 20–22 May, 2013, at San Diego Marriott Marquis & Marina, San Diego, USA.
• An Event Apart, Atlanta. 18–20 Feb, 2013, at the InterContinental hotel, Atlanta, USA.
• New Adventures in Web Design —  23–25 Jan, 2013, at The Albert Hall, Nottingham, UK.
• An Event Apart, San Francisco. 12–14 Nov, 2012, at The Palace Hotel, San Francisco, USA.
• An Event Apart, San Francisco — Big Type, Little Type. 12–14 Nov, 2012, at The Palace Hotel, San Francisco, USA.
• Interlink — Revert to Type. 2–3 Jun, 2012, at UBC Robson Square, Vancouver, CA.
• Future of Web Design Web Typography, The Good Bits. 14–16 May, 2012, at The Brewery, London, UK.
• An Event Apart, Seattle — Big Type, Little Type 02–04 Apr, 2012 at Pier 66, Bell Harbour, Seattle. USA.
• Beyond Tellerand — Welcome to the brave new world of web type (closing talk) 20–22 Nov, 2011 at Capitol Theatre, Düsseldorf, Geermany.
• Insites Tour — Storytelling Q&A; 21st Jul, 2011.
• Ampersand — Screen First; 17 Jun, 2011, Brighton, UK.
• Creative co-operatives — Q&A; Feb, 2011 at The Watershed, Bristol, UK.
• New Adventures in Web Design — Language and the Lizard Brain; Jan, 2011 in Nottingham, UK.
• Ulster Festival of Art & Design — Talking Typography at the University of Ulster, June, 2010.
• Bathcamp — First Things First; Bath, UK. March, 2010.
• OSCON ’09 — Grokkin’ Design; San Jose, California.
• SxSW ’09 — Quit bitchin’ and get your glyph on! Austin, Texas.
• SkillSwap — 80% science, 20% art; Jan, 2009.
• OSCON ’08 — Experience-driven development; Portland, USA.

Books:

• Web Typography with Mark Boulton and Rich Rutter (in progress).
• Editor, Smashing Book, typography chapter.

Articles and interviews:

• Typographica’s favorite typefaces of 2011 — FS Pimlico review
• A List Apart, December 2011 — What I Learned About the Web in 2011 with others
• One Two, One Two, Microphone Check, November 2011 — Cultural makers questionnaires à la Proust: Jon Tan
• Design Festival Podcast #6, June 2011 — Typography with Jon Tan
• The Setup, June 2011 — Jon Tan
• .Net Magazine, April 2011 — Fontdeck co-founder Jon Tan on web fonts
• New Adventures Newspaper, January 2011 — Jack A Nory article.
• Smashing Book 2, 2011 — interview.
• .Net magazine, issue 206, September 2010 — interview.
• 8 Faces magazine, issue 1, July 2010 — interview
• Pique Web., May, 2010 — Inaugural podcast, May, 2010
• 24 Ways — A festive type folly, December, 2008.

Professional associations:

• International Society of Typographic Designers (ISTD)
• Guild of Accessible Web Designers (GAWDS)
• Association Typographique Internationale (atypi)
• Society of Typographic Aficionados (S{o}TA)

There is one 陳 Tan here (me) and I like to eat tangerines. When first thinking about life-long domains this one made me smile. Soon after, a respected colleague remembered it long enough to add me to his IM, after accidentally refusing my request. Thus jon tangerine dot com.

Fresh tangerines may be available soon, but until then this is merely a personal log, knowledge silo and sandbox.

The design grew out of thoughts on Western type and print versus Chinese typography and calligraphy. A balanced elastic interface seemed to fit, so everything stretches including content images. In fact, there are no presentational or background images at all, only content. You could call it an attempt at pure information design. It’s the same ethic that makes Chinese calligraphy decorative, but simple and articulate, and lets all newspapers have a beauty all of their own, just from the anatomy of the type.

Depending on your platform, Baskerville or Palatino Linotype are used for headers and incidental text, Georgia for the body. Times New Roman is used for the stacked decorative type in the index masthead. For those lucky enough to be viewing this on a Mac, you may even notice the rare appearance of an italic Cochin.

The content is managed using a home-rolled blog application built in PHP called Lifelong File. Credit goes to Paul Whitrow for the initial work, but particularly to Jon Gibbins, whose tireless work behind the scenes has qualified him for the “Free Cider At My House Award” for 2007-8. Jon is also responsible for the extracts of my del.icio.us bookmarks, Twitter moments and Upcoming events using a modified version of MagpieRSS rather than the APIs.

Plain old semantic HTML wraps all the information you see with CSS used for style. Microformats such as hAtom, hCalendar, XFN, hCard and rel-tag feature heavily around the site.

Other features close to my heart are also planned, from weighty tomes like OpenID support to Mills and Boon fun stuff like Gravatars. Now I’ve said it, it has to happen! Thanks for reading.