Who would launch the tenth anniversary redesign of their website on a Friday afternoon? Well, probably only Jason Santa Maria. His twitter bio sums up his unfortunate predicament: “Designer by day, designer by night.”
Based in Brooklyn, New York, Jason has positioned himself as the godfather of modern typographic resources – here are a few of the offices he currently holds:
- Co-founder of Typedia, which as the name suggests is an online encyclopedia of typefaces
- Creative director for Typekit, a subscription-based service offering hosted web fonts
- Lecturer for the Interaction Design program at the School of Visual Arts in NYC
- Creative director for the online web magazine A List Apart
- Co-founder/designer of ALA’s publishing wing A Book Apart
The other projects and events he is involved in are innumerable, so instead of trying to figure out whether Jason has a clone army or just never sleeps, go over and take a look at the latest incarnation of jasonsantamaria.com.
The previous version of his website/blog introduced the concept of a custom design for each article as opposed to having entries conform to a rigid template, but this posed an unforeseen problem:
In order to post something, I felt it couldn’t be short or just a quip on a topic, it had to be substantial. I fell into a design trap I unknowingly set for myself. – Jason Santa Maria
Here’s a screenshot of the new home page design which allows posts of various lengths to co-exist in one stream. It features one of my favourite fonts Chaparral for most of the text:
Personally I don’t think he is breaking new ground with this less-is-more offering, but when Jason Santa Maria redesigns it is always worth sitting up, taking a good hard look and perhaps even a leaf or two from his book…
I like the vibrancy I sense, but one sense overrides: close to home – really close – i am acquainted with a graphic designer who could/should/must/will step out and become more visible; AS visible; engageable; commissionable. Why? Because he CAN!!!