What are some of the basic principles of typographic design, and how can they be applied to create effective and visually appealing designs?
Typography is the art of arranging letters & text in such a way that makes the copy clear, legible, appearance, structure & visually appealing to the reader. The main use of typography is to improve readability & to characterize text. Understanding the contrast, limit your font combinations, use visual hierarchy, never distort your fonts & to understand that what are the uses of the Grids, they are the five basic rules of typography.
Basic Principles Of The Typography
- Font Choices-Your choice of font is a crucial ingredient in typography. Serif fonts are the ones with the extra bits on the end of the letters & Sans Serif fonts are the ones without the extra bits. Therefore, we use Serif fonts for print & Sans Serif fonts on the web, it depends on the context of the design. Script fonts are those that imitate handwriting & Monospaced fonts are with each character being of equal width. Serif & Sans Serif font can prove very effective in terms of readability.
- Letter Spacing & Line Height-This is the most important aspect of typography. The general rule of typography is the larger the text, the lower the letter-spacing value. Line height is extremely important in order to ensure readability in your text.
- Size-If you want your text to be scanned easily, make it larger & less effort for the eyes. For example, if you design for children or the elderly, then a small font size doesn’t seem good. Also the main headline would be the largest text on the page, followed by the sub-headers & then the body text.
- Alignment-Aligning your text properly can reduce the effort to make sense of the page layout & also organize the content in the reader’s mind. Grid are a great way to maintain alignment in your design. If everything is positioned within a couple of pixels of each other, things will start to look messy.