A typeface can say a thousand words
October 6, 2021
Sheldon: Perhaps we should divide and conquer. Now, you track down all the citations and properly note them in our bibliography, and I will roll up my sleeves and decide what font we want to use.
Amy: Sheldon, there are hundreds of citations to track down.
Sheldon: And thousands of fonts, but you don’t hear me complaining.
A conversation between popular characters from sitcom Big Bang Theory, Season 12 Episode 9.
Selecting a suitable typeface is important as it sets the tone of the content and also helps in creating visual hierarchy across a page. Thus, typography is an expression that makes text come to life. According to KSU UXD, Importance of Type Communication and Usability Slides and Transcript, “Typography has a vital role in communication, not only does it display the literal meaning of our message, but the style of the typeface itself can offer additional context to the to the words displayed.”
There are two important factors of typography - legibility and readability. While doing layout, designers must pay attention to how their design/background is getting affected on the copy and how clean they can make it to read the text easily. Choosing an effective type system, designers can introduce a visual hierarchy in the design making the copy consistent and giving structure to it.
An effective type system is one that has a good balance among line length, tracking, leading, size, weight, color usage, and alignment. Satisfying all of these features will lead to a well-functioning design.