Typography

it is important to remember that the way people normally read is not the same way people read online. People tend to scan online text and just search for keywords and headings and don’t take time to sit and read it all

Tips to combat this

1. embrace lists
2. use meaningful subheadings
3. highlight keywords
4. reduce your word count as much as possible so only necessary information is included

To have successful online text it is important to ease the reader in, and once you have managed to successfully ease them is, its is vital that your text a joy to read. This means that it should be written in”plain English”, with only meaningful information. A perfect example of this is the Apple website as they make reading their site an “experience” which is exciting and a joy to read which makes you standout from other sites.

Five Rules

1. Focus on body copy
2. choose a comfortable point size of 15-25px
3. consider leading (120-145% of point sze
4. maintain a measure (45-75 characters)
5. select a legible typeface (the most important point for an enjoyable read)

TIPS

1.Body text should not be too bold, a dark grey is a good body colour to choose as well as it creates a slightly softer contrast between the text and background.

2.Full length images to separate text and make your site more eye-catching.

3.make sure your words do not spread across the entire screen. a human being tends to only be able to read 11 words per line before they lose their place and lose interest. Especially important when scanning text online.

4.Text Leading is important as it helps spread out the text and make to less confusing for the user to read when they are scanning the text. Leading refers to the spacing between the lines of the text instead of the spacing between words.

5.It is successful to have 2 contrasting weights in text between headings and body text to make your headings stand out and create a clear separation between sections. It is better to choose a type face that has lots of different font weights so that you can differentiate headings and texts like this. (If you choose to have more than one font, 3 is the absolute max!!)

6.Google plugin “what font” tells you the typeface used in any website you wish- extremely helpful if you see a site using the perfect text for you but you don’t know what it is.

7.Typefaces inspo– Typewolf, font shop, prowebtype.com

Research

1. dash
2. en-dash
3. em-dash
4. Quotations- FOR WORDS
5. Primes- FOR NUMBERS

TASK

Take the given content and put it onto sigma and play about with typefaces, leading, lists, images, typography scales, weights etc.

 

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*****People to Research*****

1. Tim Browne-created the World Wide Web, also introduced modularscale.com
2. Chris Murphy-introduced the importance of typography scale, changing typography forever
3. Chris Dixon– New York magazine Design 2010
4. Jamie Clarke-amazing unique typefaces that are extremely detailed. (shows how he created it on his website.)
5. BOOKS– go to library and look at the typography design in the books and see what you like and what you don’t like. (EG Penny Dreadfuls-how ahead of its time they were) “Flexible Typesetting” by Tim Browne