At the risk of having a rant, I despair of the quality of typography in much of the digital media I have to deal with. Now, I trained as a designer when typographical design was a distinct and highly prized discipline. Print material - ads, literature, stationary etc. was created by a designer, then passed to a typographer or typographical designer to specify the type. When DTP arrived, the designer’s concepts could go straight to print – so the output was purely dependent upon the quality of the designer’s typographical skills and understanding, which in many cases was sadly lacking.
So, why does this matter in today’s digital world? Because, despite rich media advances, the web is still largely a text based medium and an understanding of the principles of typography is vital if copy is to be easily read and understood. Let’s look at just a few fundamentals:
Line length – the landscape format of a web page is not ideal (why do you think newspaper pages are vertical?). The ideal number of words to a line is about 10-12 max. Why? Because that is the ideal number for the eye to scan and move to the next line with ease – without struggling to find the beginning of the line again.
Text layout – ranged left text reads better than justified or ranged right text. Why? As above, it makes it easier for your eye to return to begin the next line as the lines ‘look’ different.
Upper and lowercase text reads better than all caps – Why? Because once we learn to read we then begin to recognise words by their shape, not by reading them character for character, and the ascender and descenders (the bits that stick above and below the line) in lowercase text help us see the shape more quickly and easily(that’s why motorway signs are in upper and lower).
Sadly, part of the reason for the demise of good typography is that text or content in digital media is often left to the final moment. Pages are filled with ‘greek’ text to view the designs, and nobody (certainly not the designers) ever has to consider how well the content is read.
I could go on… but I hope these few, simple examples make the point. There is an old truism… the best typography is never noticed – you are too busy reading the content.
