Want to know how to work with variable fonts and how to create kinetic typographic animations for websites? If yes, this creative, go-at-your-own-pace course is for you. We've created a series of projects for this that are all about getting weird with type.
Across 6 hours, you'll learn how to add variable fonts to your websites, plus how to animate and make them interactive. You'll also work with P5.js, a Javascript library for creative coding, to bend and mould typography.
You'll also create your very own kinetic typography animations from scratch, be able to add them to websites and make them user-interactive.
How to add variable typography to websites and change it
How to add CSS animations and transitions to web type
Working with P5.js within an in-browser canvas, even if you've never coded before
How to think about and create your own kinetic typography animations from scratch
How to let your users change and interact with your beautiful kinetic type animations
How to break apart typography into its base components to rework it completely
Requirements
A computer (Windows, Mac or Linux) with the latest version of Chrome installed and a broadband internet connection. That’s everything!
Target Audience
Anyone who wants to learn how to work with variable typography or create their own interactive, kinetic typography from scratch.
This is a beginner course when it comes to page transitions, though we would recommend basic knowledge of HTML, CSS, and a bit of Javascript before starting. If you don’t have this just yet, trying our Learn To Code Now book, or taking either our Foundation HTML, CSS + JS course or our Javascript for Designers course will help you feel as prepared as possible.
Welcome to the course! In the first project we discover how to add web typography to a site and how to play around with variable type using CSS animations
We extend upon variable type with the Bandeins Strange typeface which has two levels of variability. We also add in hover states and a script to change the type on scroll.
For most kinetic type animations, we need to draw in a canvas to be able to manipulate our type. In this project, we copy and paste our text so we can play around with its width
Once we've started to copy and paste our image, we want to be able to play with its distortion within a grid
We take kinetic type to its extremes by making the grid very small and by letting our users change the text and the speed of animation
Sometimes, we want to be able to let our users have control over the animation. We add timeline scrubbing to our project along with an animation loop
In our brutalism fansite, Brutalust, we add in a typer-style effect to our HTML-content using vanilla Javascript's setInterval looping to change and randomize text
In our final project, we take drawing to its extreme by sampling a font and redrawing it with circles and lines, and then using vectors to add distortion based on our mouse position
Rik (he/him) is a Mancunian coder, teacher and CEO of SuperHi. He was the co-founder of Steer (a code school in London) and has taught several thousand people to code. He is a bit too old to be posting memes on our social media and recently featured as a Sour Patch Kid in the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade.