INTRODUCTION TO TYPOGRAPHY
DESIGN
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2010
Adobe
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reserved.
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Goals of typographic design
Typography plays an important role in how audiences perceive your document
and its information.
Good design is about
capturing your audience’s interest and
helping your audience gather information quickly and accurately.
Typography creates relationships between different types of information, both
organizing this information and keeping it interesting.
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Design principles for typography
Legibility: Making sure the audience can read and understand your text.
Similarity, alignment: Using typography to create relationships between
similar kinds of information.
Uniformity or consistency: Repeating familiar elements to focus your
audience’s attention.
Contrast: Creating interest and distinguishing different types of information
with different typefaces. One element of contrast is hierarchy—making sure
the audience understands that information has different levels of importance.
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Typography and legibility
Legibility is a combination of factors:
Font family
Font size
Letter, word, and line spacing
Alignment
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Legibility and font families
Online Print
Stroke
Serifs create Appears Helps the
distinctions between blurry reader follow
characters (uppercase text easily Line
“I” and lowercase “L”
)
Serif fonts have Helps move Helps move
contrasting strokes reader’s eye reader’s eye
and lines character to character to
character character Stroke
Sans serif fonts have Helps readers Makes words
uniform strokes easily read in a sentence
throughout text hard to follow
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Legibility and body text size
Legibility of body text varies for different audiences:
Younger audiences may be able to read fonts sized at 8 or 9 points.
Older audiences may be able to read font sizes around 10 points or above.
Font sizes above 14 points break down the continuity of the text, making
text appear too gray.
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Legibility and spacing
If letters, words, or lines are too close together, readers have a hard time
because text blocks tend to look too dark.
If letters, words, or lines are too far apart, readers have a hard time because
blocks of text tend to look too light, causing readers to lose a sense of
continuity.
Spacing between words needs to be consistent to promote legibility;
too much variation leads to eyestrain.
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Legibility and alignment
Left-aligned text is most legible,
because spacing between words is
uniform.
Justified text is also legible, though
less so with shorter line lengths
because it tends to create uneven
spaces between words.
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Legibility and alignment
Center-aligned and right-aligned
text is generally harder to read,
because your readers’ eyes are
used to following text from left
to right.
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Font families and audience
Each font family has a different “personality.”
Use different font families to evoke tone and mood.
An advertisement for a school, for example, might use an “elegant” font
such as
An advertisement for a financial firm, on the other hand, might use a more
“modern” font such as
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Font families for headings
For body text, you may want to use something fairly conventional and legible.
For headings, consider audience: teenagers respond to different fonts than
businesspeople or academics.
Choose font families that support your subject matter, or deliberately use a
contrasting font to create interest.
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Similarity and alignment
Aligned text creates a line in your
design; such lines help readers draw
connections between different parts
of a document.
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Uniformity and font families
To maintain overall uniformity, limit the number of different font families per
page to one or two.
Use the same font for headings and body text to produce a uniform look; this
is known as concordance.
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Contrast and font families
Using the same font family throughout creates uniformity but may make
documents seem “flat” or uninteresting.
You can add interest by contrasting the display type and body type.
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Contrast and font families
To create contrast, you could
use two font families, one serif
and one sans serif.
Heading is set in Subheading is
Impact—a sans set in Georgia—a
serif font serif font
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Conflict and font families
To avoid conflict, many
designers avoid using two
font families of the same
variety, such as two serif
fonts.
Heading is set in Subheading is
Palatino—a serif set in Georgia—
font also a serif font
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Contrast and tracking
Tracking refers to the space
between all of the letters in a line.
Font families have built-in
tracking that works well for body
text.
For headings, you can change
tracking to create contrast.
Heading is set
with wide tracking
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Contrast and baseline shift
Designers shift baseline to create interest:
Dropping the first
letter adds a playful
look.
Moving other letters
around creates a
“jittery” effect.
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Hierarchy and typography
Use typography to guide readers through the levels of your document.
Use different headings by changing font family, font type, font size, font color.
To promote uniformity and help your audiences navigate, keep typographic
choices consistent for each subsection throughout the document.
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Hierarchy and typography
Hierarchy helps your audience distinguish between levels of information, such
as headings versus body text.
Many documents are divided into hierarchical sections:
Main title
Section
Subsection
Or
Book
Chapter
Subheading
Sub-subheading
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Example of hierarchy
Top-level headings can use
unconventional fonts
Different levels use different
font sizes, font families, font
colors, and leading.
These headings look the same
because they express the same
level of hierarchy
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Summary
Typography can play a key role in design.
Good typography starts with font family; choose these to meet your design
goals, but keep them limited.
Use text alignment to create relationships between different kinds of
information.
Create contrast by using a serif font for headings and a sans serif font for
body text (or vice versa). You can also use italics, bold, tracking, or color to
create contrast.
Use contrast to indicate hierarchy.
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