8 killer Typography Tips To Maximize Your Design Skills
Tags: Typography, Design Process, Design, Tips

Come the time when typography has become the lifeblood of your brand image. The advanced web designing junkies swear by good typography because it creates a visual logic screaming the many messages the marketer wants to deliver.

Typography is a basic skill that has intense bearing on the brand image. To tell you, there lay a series of heavy-weight typography rules but we are here to teach you the most basic pointers that straighten things up for you. The thumb-rule is, however to try and make the text readable less exhausting, crisp and entertaining.

Establishing hierarchy

Most effective typography is based on hierarchy of messaging. It promptly trains the visitors, through the discreet usage of font style, typefaces, size, heights, where to start reading and how to keep reading as they navigate.

It not only enhances the readability but also the subject matter of the content besides holding the reader’s attention. Among other technicalities however, adjusting the size is the commonest way to establish hierarchy.

Eg: Headlines, titles and calls to action are presented with different font sizes.

Accentuating the readability:

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Above said is the key part of your typography. Stylish but difficult to read fonts rather adversely affect the message.

For example, there are many logos with small script fonts to be seen that are pretty challenging to read. One must be careful while choosing a multi-faceted typeface. After all, easing out things to the reader is the motto. One mustn’t leave them guessing.

Choosing the right alignment:

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Alignment is vital because the overall look of the text depends on it. Besides, it helps the whole process of deciphering the information effortless for the readers.

One must be careful about the Flush left, center and flush right alignments. However, choosing the flush left alignment is the most safe-sided option because our eyes are used to it.

Limiting the fonts:

Using regular font is the delivery mechanism and typeface is the creative bent to it. Do not treat a single design with more than two font families. If need be, try bold, italics versions of the same font.

Tracking:

Otherwise called the letter spacing, it is used to adjust the space between words so that they look even.

By taking care of the uniformity, tracking also enhances the readability. The range of characters and their density is hugely affected by tracking.

Leading:

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While tracking is maintaining the space between the words, leading has the same application on lines. No denying that readability of your text is hugely impacted by leading.

The type size of the base lines should be 20 percent greater than the font size. This means, a 10 point font should have 12 point leading. The ratio however, can be adjusted as per the desired effect.

Kerning:

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Kerning refers to the white space between the individual letters or characters. There are many fonts that come with default kerning value which makes the space between letters look normal. Furthermore, adjusting the kerning of your brand font escalates the visual appeal.

Kerning is a smart hack and the designer must know when to kern. Also, there is certain letter combos that are likely to raise problems should be pacified by kerning. Here’s referring to the letters that sit too closely and letters with huger spacing than the rest.

Font pairing:

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A good typographer has to know which fonts to pair together. This is the basic requirement whatsoever.

A strong knowledge on the basic gives you liberty to experiment with contrasting pair like Sans Serif + Serif, Script + Modern, Thin + Heavy. Hence, a good outcome of the experiment makes your text stand out, well-formatted and not to mention, well organized.