Achieving good hierarchy should generally start with a sketch where you layout what your most important visual element is down to your least important element. Ask yourself what you want the viewer to read first. In this example, the home page of thisisdare. In this case, the focal point is achieved with size and color, but where does your eye go next?
The hierarchy here is achieved by color and contrast despite its order in the composition. What if the about us text were black rather than orange?
If your typography and other design elements are dense and too close together, your content will become difficult to read. This is where whitespace comes in. I hear a lot of my clients telling me to fill in those empty spaces or to not waste the space, but white space is a very intentional component of good design. In , Jan Tschichold wrote,. Whitespace can be used to create balance or lead the viewers eye from one part of the composition to the next. It can invoke a feeling of elegance or add a level of communication to a typographic treatment.
The FedEx logo uses the whitespace between the uppercase E and the x to create a counterform — an arrow. This adds a secondary level of communication to the word.
The truth is, there is no evidence to support that either one is more legible than the other in print. Some say sans serif fonts should be reserved for titles and headers and serif fonts should be used for body copy, while just as many others say the exact opposite. However, when dealing with web design or any kind of on-screen design, it is generally agreed upon that sans serif fonts are easier to read on screen. They should be used for the majority of text on screen while serif fonts should be primarily used for small sections of copy such as titles and headers.
If you were to design a website using the typeface Akzidenz-Grotesk, hardly anyone would have it installed on their computer and as a result, your visitors would see your text in Helvetica or more likely, Arial — whichever typeface they had installed on their system. In a vain attempt to compensate for everyone on every system even the Linux users we would create fallback fonts on top of fallback fonts — a sort of Russian Roulette for typefaces. Today typography on the web is evolving.
There are several technologies which allow end-users to experience the fonts you intended them to see. Some use font-replacement, WOFF, javascript or hosted fonts. The list of technologies can get dizzying but it all boils down to this: you can use non-system fonts and trust that your users will see them. You no longer need fallback fonts in a webfont enabled world.
You can buy professional fonts with web-licenses from many online font distributors including myfonts. Most sites have licensing options which allow for print and web use, and they all allow for some sort of free trial period. They have some decent fonts and simple installation instructions. If you want to see your or any site with a font facelift, try out the font-swapper from webtype.
For a great example of webfonts in action, check out adamstoddard. WhatFont is easy to use — with just a click it tells you what fonts are used in a webpage along with what size, color and line height are used. Understanding these basic typographic elements and applying them skillfully to your print or web designs will enhance the readability for your viewer and the quality of your design.
Different typefaces are more legible than others at small sizes, while others are more suitable for larger type. This kind of information can generally be found in the commercial descriptions of the various fonts.
The oldest typefaces were called blackletter , and date back to the s. These early typefaces were reminiscent of handwritten calligraphy. The New York Times logo is a classic, ubiquitous example of blackletter type, as are many other popular newspaper titles. After blackletter came the first serif typefaces.
Serifs include slight projections that finish off the strokes of their letterforms called serifs , where the style gets its name. Emerging in the s, the first serifs were Old Style serifs. This style includes Garamond and Goudy Old Style.
The successors to the Old Style serifs were called Transitional serifs, which made their first appearance in the s. These typefaces had high stroke contrast and were more upright than their Old Style predecessors. The natural evolution of the trends present in Transitional serif typefaces became known as the Modern serifs during the s.
These Modern serifs include fonts like Didot and Bodoni. They have extreme contrast between strokes and no brackets on their serifs. Slab serifs are the final evolution of the serif style. With the advent of mechanization e. They have little contrast between strokes and most are unbracketed. Slab serif typefaces include Rockwell and Clarendon, among others. While serifs were the first typefaces to evolve after the original blackletters, sans serif typefaces largely came on to the design scene in the early 20th century.
These early sans serif typefaces were called grotesque or gothic fonts and included typefaces like Franklin Gothic. Source: Michael Sallit. Later in the s, after the Grotesques came to the Neo-Grotesque sans serif typefaces. These typefaces were designed to be more legible than their earlier counterparts and generally have much plainer designs.
Helvetica and Arial are both examples of Neo-Grotesque sans serifs. Here is a full breakdown of the different elements of typography that can attract your target audience:. Typefaces consist of groups of letters next to each other but the same shape may be used for different letters in the design. A typeface is chosen considering its style and readability.
A typeface classification is a way they're organized within a design program. You can select different typefaces or fonts based on your preference. Here are the different types of classifications:. Legibility shows how easy it is for an individual to read words in a typeface. Legibility is crucial in finding out the meaning of the typeface that differentiates your product from others in the market. Here is an overview of what you need to look for when making your typography legible:.
Systems fonts display pre-existing fonts that come with the computer you purchase. The default font can give you more continuity for your brand, but you can also download other fonts if you believe they can resonate more with your target audience. Here is are some tips for using typography when structuring your design to reach your target audience:. Find jobs. Company reviews.
Find salaries. Upload your resume. Sign in. Career Development. What is typography? Why is typography important? High rates of exposure. Influential in generating sales.
Breaks down the importance of information. Different elements of typography. Baseline: The baseline makeup is an invisible line that shows where a group of text rests on. You can use a baseline measurement when you're outlining the vertical measurement of the text to see how big it is and the relationship it has with other strands of text on a page. It's also compatible with software on different programs, so you can preview the final copy of the text to determine if it's the finalized design that you want to proceed with.
Cap height: The cap height only measures the height of capital letters shown in the design.
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