The Beginner’s Guide to Typography: Spotlight on Fonts

The famous quote “content is king” by Bill Gates holds when discussing online UX or user experience. Providing readers with an excellent UX does not just mean providing them with excellent content, but it also means delivering content in the most useful and usable format possible to encourage readers to read and interact instead of opting out for your website due to unreadability issues. That being said, the typography of your website should be on point. While there’s not a one-size-fits-all approach to online typography, there are however some basic guidelines you should consider.

The Headings

These are a crucial part of any content experience, as they have to be written in a way that would grand and hold a reader’s attention. But they also have to be presented properly, meaning that you need to the get the font and font size just right. Generally speaking, the size should be about twice as big, give or take, as the body text. For the font, sans serif and serif are common choices mainly due to their readability, but don’t hesitate to experiment with different fonts—just make sure that they’re easily legible, advises an experienced web developer from a well-known marketing agency in Provo.

The Body

While headings are what grabs the attention of readers, the body text is just as important because it’s what makes readers stay on your site. The consensus is that body text must be very easy to read. Most commonly, most websites have a body text that is twice to 2.5 times smaller than the headings, but there are also rules for line length and spacing for online text. Typically, the ideal line length is approximately 24.9 times the ideal line height, which is roughly about 1.46 times bigger than the height of the font. The length of the line could likewise be expressed in specific characters, with 85 characters being the norm. Following this rule would allow for the inclusion of padding, margins, etc., which makes the body text more aesthetically pleasing.

What About Custom Fonts?

Woman desigining a font

It’s likewise essential to note that despite the suggestions given above, most websites don’t really use standard fonts and instead use custom fonts specifically developed to fit their brand. This is an excellent option especially if your brand is all about uniqueness and could help ensure that your copy will stand out among your competitors.

The Mobile Factor

Mobile websites don’t observe the same general principles as standard web typography do. What you need to remember is that you should check how you could use responsive fonts to help make sure that user experience is the same on desktop and mobile platforms.

Regardless of how easy your navigation or how on point your web design, without great content, all your efforts will be for naught. To make certain that you deliver optimized user experience of your content, you have to display in a manner that will entice readers to read and engage with it. And while the suggestions above offer a solid foundation for delivering content that’s visually pleasing, you should play around with your site’s typography to determine what works best for your readers.

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