TIPS ON TYPOGRAPHY IN INTERFACE DESIGN

When I hear design, the first thing that comes to my mind is a combination of colors, texts, and drawings. Nothing less, nothing more.

If you have this same mindset, it is time for us to come out of ignorance and embrace the knowledge of what true design is.

To create a professional design, I have learned the importance of a lot of things. I want to share some of them with you. Let’s roll on!.

TYPOGRAPHY

Today’s article covers some basic points in typography you should apply to your design.

Typography is an essential part of an effective design every designer should master. Design is more than just picking a font type and size from the drop-down menu on your computer. Using the right font type communicates the right intent and message of your design to your users.

One thing to always remember as a designer is that typography has a vital effect on your users. Good typography makes the act of reading effortless, while poor typography turns users off.

Some tips to consider before selecting fonts for your design interface

• Minimize the number of fonts used.

Too many fonts is not a good thing and it could ruin a good design. It is advisable to stick to one font for mobile design and a maximum of two fonts for web application design. If you find yourself using 3 more fonts, you should think hard and evaluate if you need that many fonts on your design.

- Typography hierarchy

The typography hierarchy helps organize your content in a structured way. Typography elements like font size, typeface, alignment, and color are used to show hierarchy contrast in your content.

When designing for the web, you would have a different typeface for heading and body to create slight contrast in your design. Use can Serif and Sans-Serif or the vise versa for the heading and body respectively but do not use the same typeface for both heading and body.

- White spacing (Enough breathing space)

There are so many other aspects to your font that affect how your readers interpret your content. White spacing, also known as negative spacing, is one of them. This is the gap between elements in your design and must be managed to prevent uneven gaps or characters appearing to run into each other. Inadequate white space makes your content difficult to read.

- Alignment

Justify longer text characters to the left. This is important if you have more than 50–60 characters in a line. Turn on hyphenation to allow text breaking to the next line.

You might ask, Why do we designers care so much about typography and its importance in design? Some of it has to do with styling and a good look but more importantly, it is about readability.

Thank you for reading!

BY CHIBUZOR NWANKWO