Web Typography
This will be the second day of none busy days for me in the office. While i’m waiting for the new project that will arrive i try to make myself more busy and spent hours staying in the office be productive to me.
Since i am studying web design in a couple of weeks ago to my website motionartworks.com. i decided to study the rules and princples of web typography. Not everyone is aware of using proper typography in the web. Then, i found out that the rules of using typography in print design has a lot of big difference in web design because in web we have to consider first the availability of fonts in user’s machine. Second, if its a device font or not and last but not the least, their browser compatability.
In print design, we don’t care about these rules as long it looks nice and attractive to our eyes it’s perfect. In off-page, we can use whatever fonts we like.
I just summarize some principles i learned to smashing magazine about web typography.
5 Principles And Ideas Of Setting Type On The Web
1. Approach Web Typography Decisions Systematically
In web design every typographic decision needs to simultaneously accomplish a variety of results. Each headline you create should be set in text that is legible and search engine friendly, while the typeface should fit within the guidelines of the company’s brand. Furthermore, typography should fit to the graphic style of the site and meet user expectations of being able to copy and paste text. As you can see, that’s a wide array of needs for a headline to accomplish.
2. Utilize Information Hierarchy
There is more than one way to define precedence through the use of typography. First of all, the type size, color, weight, case, and whether the type is set normal or in italics will give the font greater or smaller importance. We also can’t ignore where the type is placed within our website layout.
3. Design for Optimal Flow
Hierarchy is important in page flow as well. It helps users to recognize the most important elements of the page as they scroll down through it. There are other typographic issues to look at regarding the flow. Spacing is a big part of the flow. White space, tracking, leading, indentation, as well as the padding and margins on elements — all these elements form the flow of the page.
4. Maintain Legibility Within the Presence of Branding
In order for a website to stand out the visual design of the site needs to be of high quality. In some cases, this takes the form of an elaborate design. With the growing popularity of illustrative and heavily textured sites, the need to make sure that typography is optimally chosen remains particularly important. Let’s review a few sites that use grunge design and texture elements. We’ve looked at these sites before in the article The Secrets Of Grunge Design, but not in this way.
5. Treat Text as a User Interface
Text within interfaces is extremely important. In the book Getting Real from 37 Signals (available for free), the author states how “every letter matters.” Word choice within user interfaces can make or break the functionality of the site. How those words are presented is equally important. Unstyled letterforms give no indication as to what users should interact with.
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