Nearly 90% of the average website consists of typography. They are developed so that consumers can locate the information they need, accessing products and services in the process.
Content plays an important part in any website, and how these words are presented is crucially important. Typography therefore plays an important role in how a website is designed and presented. Typography web design needs to be considered to ensure that it creates the maximum impact.
What is typography?
Put simply, typography is the art of arranging letters and text in a way that ensures the copy is legible, clear and visually appealing to the reader. It will involve the appearance, structure and font style, with an aim to encourage certain emotions and communicate a range of messages. It’s typography that helps to bring text to life.
Today, typography is mostly associated with digital communications and print. The internet has sponsored a creative explosion of typography, giving web designers a vast choice of type and font options.
How is typography used in web design?
Typography is used in web design to create visual impact, communicate a message and engage users. Digital typography gives web designers greater fluidity and flexibility compared to print typography, but there are a range of considerations that designers have to bear in mind when using typography effectively on a website that will be accessed on different devices.
Why is typography important in web design?
There’s more to digital typography than choosing a beautiful and effective font. It’s a key component of user interface design. It helps to establish a strong visual hierarchy, setting the overall tone of the website and creating a good graphic balance.
Typography should be used to help inform users as well as optimising readability and accessibility. It should help to frame the overall user experience.
Typography plays an important role in establishing brand identity, framing the site’s overall personality. By using unique and consistent typography users will come to associate a particular typeface with your brand.
It also helps to influence decision making and can have a profound impact on the way that users digest and perceive the information that’s conveyed by the text. Good typography holds the attention of the readers and can help to encourage someone to stay on your website for a longer period of time.
A website should be memorable and visually appealing for all the right reasons and typography plays an important role in that process.
How do you use typography effectively?
There’s more to website typography than choosing an appealing font for your content. There are a range of factors to bear in mind when working with website typography if it is to have the intended impact. When typography appears on screen there are a number of different factors that will determine how it appears.
Firstly, the screen size will play a key role. While screen sizes differ and can be impossible to predict, responsive and intelligent design will try to accommodate any shift in dimensions, no matter how slight. Failure to do so might mean that even the most considered typesetting might be done in vain.
Another key factor to how your typography will be perceived is the screen resolution. Pixel density will play a large part in the legibility of your text. While advances in technology have made hi-resolution screens much more accessible to the masses, designers need to bear in mind the large proportion of users who still make use of older technology.
The brightness and contrast levels on a screen, known as screen calibration, can determine how colours appear on the screen. This, in turn, will impact the overall appearance of the typography. The colour choices for web design will need to take account of a wide range of screen settings.
Effective web design
Typography plays a key role in effective web design and should be chosen carefully.
At Dawn Creative, we create websites for our clients that harness good design principles to creativity for maximum impact.
To find out more about our approach call 0161 711 0910 or email wakeup@dawncreative.co.uk
