Tasting Table (2015 redesign)
The foodie site tastes much better with fresh type, but it’s still just slightly undercooked.
How I Met Y our Matcha?
The cooking and dining resource Tasting Table has been around since 2008, but previous designs were not so sophisticated typographically. The new website launched in November 2015 feels very fresh, with recent type from Grilli Type (GT Sectra), FontFont (FF Mark), and Fontseek (Quick Brush). The look now properly reflects Tasting Table’s status as a major enterprise in the food world.
There are nice typographic touches throughout the content-heavy site, and only a few missteps: a strict geometric sans like FF Mark can be wearisome for long texts (fortunately, there aren’t many); kerning is disabled on headlines, resulting in some gappy words; and I would have used the headline-optimized versions of Sectra for the really big stuff (see images at bottom).
I also feel like this site stretches the limit of the current scroll-don’t-page paradigm. Individual screenviews of each lengthy scroll are well composed, but as an overall experience some of these busy pages can feel overwhelming and you lose your place.
That aside, there is some good work here. Kudos to whoever picked the type (designers, please make yourselves known!) and hopefully we’ll see the kinks ironed out as the new site matures.
Logotypes made with multiple individual letter styles are difficult. It can be a nice way to demonstrate variety and dynamism, but it’s not easy to combine these elements into an instantly recognizable brand rather than a crowded jumble. The new Tasting Table logo is a well-advised refinement that cleans up the spacing, opens counters, and strengthens strokes, improving the mark’s performance at small sizes and on various backgrounds. These letters may come from fonts, but I’ll bet a skilled lettering artist or type designer was involved with the enhancement.
Disabled kerning is not always obvious, but when it is, the result can be distracting (KNO W, Y otam).
Quick Brush is like a grocer’s script made by a fairly idiosyncratic sign painter. It works ok in all-caps but can suffer without kerning (MORE ARTICL ES).
The text-optimized base subfamily of GT Sectra looks great at most sizes, but once you get this big the type would benefit from a shift up to Fine or Display variations.
