Previously, the Wiredelta® team presented the importance behind colors and how to use them to your benefit. We talked about the emotional and psychological impact colors have on consumers and why it is so important for businesses to know how to choose the colors that best represent their brand identity. Today, we are presenting how you can use typography for even better results! We will show you how typography affects your conversion rates and how you can create an even better brand image using the text on your website.
What is typography?
Humans are social beings and writing fulfills the need to communicate to each other. Typography, however, is more than simply writing. It is the art of sending a message in an easy to understand and appealing form. At first, books and advertising articles were created by hand and as you can imagine, this was expensive, time-consuming and tedious. Soon after, the printing press was invented. This sped up printing times and ultimately reduced costs. As a result, content was mass-produced using the printing press.
With the invention of the internet, the importance of typography increased to unimaginable levels. Typography has become an incredibly powerful tool to stand out to your users online. The best designers are trained in this art and know how to use typography to benefit the company and ultimately the consumer. But when you hear the word “typography”, most of us think about one thing; font. This is a very popular misconception, typography is much more than whether you chose Arial or Verdana to display text!
The elements of typography
As we said before, typography is an art, which includes a long list of creative elements, including:
- The typeface or font family – such as Arial, Times New Roman, Courier, Muli, etc.;
- The actual font – this refers to the body of a character, such as light, bold, or even italic;
- Font size – measured in pixels;
- Leading – the vertical space between each line of text;
- Kerning – the space between character;
- Tracking – the spacing of all characters;
- Measure – the width of a text block;
- Hierarchy and scale – heading, sub-heading, and body text.
This technique of arranging text is intertwined with a layout, grid, color scheme and design themes. It encompasses the overall presentation of websites, articles, and applications. And yet, understanding the relevance of typography in order to be successful in your business can be a real challenge.
Why is typography important?
Based on how typography is used, people experience different feelings and emotions. In the web industry, design needs to match your brand’s identity, as every style portrays different personas.
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For instance, serif typefaces, fonts that have ‘feet’ at the ends of the letterforms and are generally used by traditional businesses as a benchmark for reliability and stability. Some of the best-known serif fonts are Times, Georgia, Garamond.
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Other fonts such as Brush, Zapfino, Scriptina, and Lucinda are considered intriguing, elegant, and sophisticated. These font types are typically used when companies want to create a more personal relationship with consumers. Coca-Cola and Instagram, for example, use such font styles to achieve a feeling of connectedness. So a friendly, social font is the right choice, as opposed to a stern and formal one. Brands like Cadillac, on the other hand, want to express elegance and finesse. Therefore, choosing a calligraphic style to match their values.
What makes good typography?
Typography is a way to differentiate oneself from competitors. That’s why this step should not be neglected. The relevance of typography is seen when comparing companies or websites in the same field. Typography is even more obvious in online papers. Often publishers, including the New York Times and the Washington Post, share breaking news with similar content, but the layout makes them distinctly different. Although quality content is imperative, users may never read this information if they are turned off by the overall appearance.
Worse, users can end up choosing the competitors. Great typography is a hook used to entice readers.
Choosing good typography is a path to guide your audience in the desired direction. Here are some guidelines to help you get your message across and reach your audience:
- The average number of words by sentence should not exceed 15-20.
- Padding and margins should be analyzed. White spaces work as useful tools to move from space to space effectively. Little space between characters makes text hard to read.
- You should never use more than two typefaces, and they should correspond or contrast. For example, you could use Garmond for the headline and Muli for the body text.
- It’s advised to use one font and play with different weights and styles.
- Font sizes for the body text should not be higher than 12.
In practice, there are no formal guidelines to follow. Typography is a versatile matter where creativity is welcomed. These are simply basic recommendations to take into account to avoid being overwhelmed by the astonishing array of fonts and styles.
Challenges of typography
Some constraints make typography more complicated. First of all, dealing with advertising is complex. Nowadays, the text is interrupted by a lot of advertising pages and legibility is blurred. For a company, advertising is a way to earn money so often times it cannot be removed. Finding a way to spotlight the text and ads is a real challenge, as they both compete for the viewer’s attention. However, it’s crucial in order to make both, reader and advertiser, satisfied.
Secondly, the development of new technology has increased the number of mediums able to display data. By medium, we are referring to smartphones, tablets, smartwatches, and computers. Nevertheless, each requires a specific coding to be read. Depending on the medium used and the size of the screen proportions change. In order to be readable, the coding process should be reviewed.
The growth of the web industry and its accessibility allows individuals to experiment with typography like a professional. Below you can find some of the most popular tools to help you choose the right typography.
Typetester
Typetester is a free tool for designing beautiful typography with more than 2,800 web fonts. This application is affordable for non-font experts and great for budding web designers. It tackles some of the constraints seen above such a coding and medium differences.
Typekit
Typekit is an Adobe tool providing fonts operated in both computer and web thanks to its license-free feature. You can sign up for the plan that best suits your needs and get a library of fonts to choose.
Adobe Font Folio
Adobe Font Folio tried to shape customer needs in the best way by proposing two offers. Font Folio 11.1 is intended for professionals.
Offering a font library of more than 2,400 OpenType® fonts and dealing with publishing multilingual documents. This tool supports both Central and Eastern European languages, as well as Japanese, Greek, Arabic, and Devanagari. For design students and teachers, Font Folio Education Essential offers 500 OpenType® fonts and the possibility to design font.
Wiredelta
Despite humanity’s raw brainpower, becoming an expert in the infinite number of available typography software is impossible. Moreover, we have limited time in our hectic workdays to pursue learning this ever-changing software.
No worries, though! Wiredelta is a digital agency offering specifically tailored designs that transform volatile ideas into rock-solid solutions. Many of our products are built on WordPress, which is currently the most popular Content Management System (CMS). Using this tool, we can provide you with beautiful themes that match your business’s values. However, if you are in search of a unique? Our developers can build apps that represent your brand identity from scratch, using the perfect combination of NodeJS, AngularJS, and Ionic. Whether you just want a beautiful landing page or an e-commerce platform, mobile or desktop, we are ready to help.
Conclusion
Typography is becoming an increasingly important and key differentiator between your company and its competitors. Designers possess the skill, knowledge, and intuition to successfully utilize new and unconventional typeface combined with their ability to implement new layout ideas. Despite your best efforts to pick the right font, it’s often hard to know which one will convert best. One solution is to test different options against a real life audience before updating your logo, website or ads, or another is to use Wiredelta® where web designers are able to create for you a design that will match with your business philosophy, products and/or services. Take a look at our services to select the one that suits your business best. If you are not sure what you need, message our chatbot any time, day or night.
Also, visit our site and read more about how colors affect your website or how to improve first impressions on your website. You will find SEO tips that will help rank you higher on Google, learn why UI is so important and much more!
