Typography is the balance on your pages. It combines verbal and visual messages to help the reader understand the substance of its content. Good typography helps the reader interpret messages in a fast and efficient manner.

Typography is an entire subject matter in itself. Yet there are some basic rules to follow that can help you in your design.

Legibility

When you are laying out your page, your content needs to establish a pattern of organization. Instead of placing photographs sporadically throughout your pages, create an order. Align text with photographs to create repeating patterns. Avoid surprising the reader; instead make your site predictable to gain the confidence of the reader.

Use white space to avoid busyness. White space allows the eye to concentrate on the text that is present.

Typeface

When choosing a typeface for your text, choose one that generally ships with both the Apple Macintosh and Microsoft Windows operating systems. When you select a font to type your text information, it may look good on your computer. But when other viewers view your site, if they don’t have the font type you have selected, their systems will automatically select a font, and transcribe the information using that font. Which may cause strange things to happen to your layout. By selecting general fonts, you are increasing the odds that other viewers will see your layout as you intended. The five most useful fonts are:

Times New Roman

Georgia

Verdana

Arial

Trebuchet

Above all, choose a font and establish it as your norm throughout your site. One font type creates a professional look, and establishes continuity throughout your site.

Type Size

Choosing what size your type will be is a matter of choice. People have flexibility in how their site and pages will look. But to create a professional look, establish certain guidelines to carry through from page to page. The integrity of your site depends on how each page carries over from the one before.

Just as you should create a site using web friendly font types, create a site that uses web friendly sizing. Most sites have a consistency to their sizing. Titles are bolded and larger than the text. Text is usually a fairly standard size.

Emphasis

Just like a story in a newspaper, there are certain things you can do that will put emphasis on different areas of your text. But the web is different than the written word.

Italics attracts the eye because it contrasts from the text around it. It is ideal for listing books, titles or resources.

Boldface allows the reader to quickly distinguish section breaks. It is a very effective method when used sparingly, to divide several key content areas.

Underlining is used online to represent links to other pages or resources. When you use underlining for emphasis, you may be confusing your reader, because they are anticipating a link.

Capital letters are one of the least effective tools on the web. When text is written completely in capitals, it is said to be screaming at the audience. It’s very tiresome to read.

Above all consistency is what makes your site professional.

Lori Osterberg