Ultimate Typography Design Tips to Influence Reader

Cover artwork by Junki Hong

Typography design is one of the most important aspects of graphic design. In fact, it is responsible for the overall impact your content creates on the viewer or a reader. Typography has the power to decide the overall look of your content. The quality of the content doesn't matter anymore when your typography is doing all the wrong.

This art form is not about selecting the font's styles or color; it is much more than that. There is much to talk about how to display particular text to maximize online engagement or how printed materials should follow specific typography rules - from layout selection to typography font types. A good typography design can affect your content's whole appearance, no matter how good or bad the content you decide to put. So best typography is always the key to your successful project.

What is Typography all about?

In simple words, it is defined as "the process of displaying letters and words in such a way that it becomes visually appealing to the viewer or reader of that certain site or page."

This process of arranging the letters or words in the right manner makes any content appear more exciting and engaging.

Created by John Bresciani

Typography is the life of any content, and with correct use, it can ensure that the purpose of the content is fulfilled effectively. The goal is to connect specific understanding and emotion to the reader and deliver a particular message to create significant momentum.

How Typography Design Affect Your Content

When you write something with a purposeful message, typography design plays a vital role in ensuring that the message isn't interrupted by inconsistent or disconnected fonts' choice.

Created by Telegramme Paper Co.

Looking at the top artwork, the designer has chosen a particular type of font, and it is set with a specific layout to portray excitement and positivity. It clearly delivers a strong message, it also provides correct emotions, and the font is very suitable with the content. This artwork is a perfect example of choosing an ideal font combination to uplift the context of the message.

You can also review another artwork, such as this poster collection below. The use of typography font sometimes doesn't need always to be for emotional purposes. It could also be useful, even if it's only to portray a specific style of an era. The artwork below shows a perfect example of a fun retro poster design. To make it looks retro, the designer has to choose a particular type of font style to portray this specific style.

Created by Angel Atehortua

These examples really show that different typography font choices can portray different tones of a message and different visual vibes. It has the ability to change or disrupt the meaning of your content or even take you back to a specific era. It’s up to you to decide what is the purpose of your artwork, which are some things that ought to be selected before you decided which typography font to use.

Typography Design Triggers Emotions

You may say that images are the color and shapes that we see on the pages, screens, and walls, but this is not true. Humans have emotions and perceptions, and they cannot regard images as merely shapes and colors.

The exciting part is humans respond very quickly to videos and images instead of mere words or sentences. And this is where the role of typography design comes into the picture.

Created by Marc Urtasun

It is now playing a vital role in advertising and the fields of research. Once large corporations used typography design practice by applying the psychology of words and the artistic technique into commercials, this trend has been drastically surged, and fonts are now being used much more effectively in the industry. As people are starting to understand that even a different choice of typography font could have a massive impact on people's minds and can even change the entire direction of a commercial. Due to this powerful reason, companies have been using typography font customized and well designed even for branding and logos.

The right typography design impacts the people's perception so strongly that they feel convinced to take action. The best part is all this happens very naturally as it enhances the overall mindset of the customers.

A psychological use of specific typography font and the right choice of words can trigger various feelings of happiness, sadness, anger, and excitement among readers, affecting specific emotions when done the right way.

Hold Reader's Attention With Typography

The primary significance of typography design is that it can retain people's attention for a long time. Without it, people may not even want to read your content. But when using a suitable typography font choice and specific design arrangement, you can ensure maximum attention from the reader, and you can stick the message in people's minds for a longer time. 

Created by Pellisco

This artwork above shows a perfect example of how typography design can grab people's attention and hold their focus for a longer time. Only with a specific concept and an interesting font choice, a simple artwork can be made robust.

People focus more keenly on the message when they see the ideas presented artistically, which makes things so much different.

Won't you feel compelled and motivated about something that directly appeals to your mind and heart at the same time?

The fact is typography is something more than the mere use of fonts. Instead, it is a form of challenge on reaching directly to people's minds and leaving a long-lasting impression by only using words.

People often remember seeing something exciting and artistic such as an artwork that conveys a strong message. Thus, we can say that good artwork has an immense potential to hold the reader’s intentions, creating memory and emotional momentum.

How to maximise the Effectivity of Typography

Why does typography design hold such a powerful impact? And how we can maximize the impact of our artwork? Let’s take a quick look at Gestalt’s Theory of Perception.

Great typographers should understand the influential role that psychology plays in visual perception. These are seven Gestalt principles that directly apply to typography design, and share some examples of how they’re used in our modern days:

Principal 1: Figure-Ground

The figure-ground principle states that people usually perceive objects as either in the foreground or the background instinctively. Either they stand out in the front (the figure) or fade into the scene (the ground). If you look at the artwork below, the designer arrangement the typography in a Figure-Ground manner. You can see that it creates a dimensional depth in the artwork.

Created by Alexey Slepov

Principle 2: Similarity

The theory of similarity states that we should group objects together when they appear to be similar to each other and tend to have the same visual function. The artwork below shows a perfect example as it creates an interesting pattern that draws people in and wants to understand what the artwork is all about.

Created by Jose Manual Vega

Principle 3: Proximity

The third principle, proximity, states that objects that are close together appear to be more connected than other objects that are spaced further apart. Proximity often overrides the similarity of shape, color, or even typography treatment and other factors that might differentiate different types of objects.

Created by Alessia Oertel

Principle 4: Common Region

The theory of common region is almost similar to proximity. The difference is that when visual objects are located within the same closed separator, we perceive them as being grouped.

Adding line borders or other visual barriers is a great way to create an apparent separation between various groups of objects, even if they have the same visual function, shape, color, etc.

Created by Kallan & Co

Principle 5: Continuity

The principle theory of continuity explains that elements arranged with a similar line or curve are seen to be related to each other than elements that are not with the line or curve. If you see the artworks below, it shows a great example of "continuity". The characters are perfectly arranged by connecting similar types of lines, so it looks more vital as an artwork. Whereas small texts are separated in the right corner to make a clear hierarchy of which part is the primary focus and the secondary.

Created by BlackFontLab

Principle 6: CLosure

The sixth principle, closure, explains that when we look at a complexity of an arranged visual elements, we usually tend to look for a single, more familiar pattern.

So when you look at an image or object that has missing space, your brain will fill in the blanks space and make a complete image so that you can recognize the object.

Created by Rob Clarke

Principle 7: Focal Point

The focal point principle is very straightforward. It explains that whatever object that primarily stands out will capture and hold the viewer’s attention first. It’s the first point of interest that grabs your attention, and from there, your attention moves to other parts of the image.

Created by Production Type

5 Important Key Elements of Typography Design

We have learned few things about typography design and some design principles that could help you along the way. Next, we would like to talk about the five key elements that will give you more in-depth knowledge of this creative field. These are five critical elements that you should take note of and consider to check when creating artwork:

1. Typeface

People often consider this term the synonym of font, but this is not true. Unlike fonts, it includes everything from symbols, texts, signs, and characters, numbers and letters. But keep in mind, it contains all the elements or symbols of the same kind of interface. Sometimes, even when someone asks your favorite font, he might be asking about the typeface.

Created by BlackFontLab

2. Font

When the typeface has the same size, weight, style, and writing methodology, it becomes a font. For example, Pentagon 11 Bold is a font (11 is the font's specific size, Bold is one of many font styles in the Pentagon type family). Remember, every font has its shape, purpose, and writing methodology.

Created by BlackFontLab

3 Line Length

Line length is the distance between the left edge and right edge of a single line. A common problem that designers usually make is an overlong length, but they're very easy to correct. Shorter lines usually will make a fair difference in the legibility of your content. And the way we measure line length is by average characters per single line. Ideally, 50 characters are the perfect length.

Created by John Bresciani

4 Leading

Distance from the baselines to baseline determines the leading. So the concept of leading is very simple as it is just an imaginary line that determines where the single-lined sentences rest. The fair leading adjustment also improves your typography design readability.

Created by Bękarty

5 Tracking

Tracking is the distances of characters. If the texts are too tight, especially when applying bold font, you can always adjust the search so it's easier to read. Often nowadays, people use broad tracking as a style of modern typography. Usually, this often applies to titles or headlines.

Created by Kévin Magalhaes

Tips to make your typography design more legible

Here are some tips that will guide you in making your text more reader-friendly and eye-catching.

• Use the simple letter types. They are not only comprehensive but are also easier to read.
• Focus on the reader’s demographic and then adjust the font size accordingly.
• For average website content or regular documentation, you can use the font size from 10-14. However, if you are going to use typography for advertising and branding, you should keep the font size much more extensive.
• Do not use very short or very long lines; otherwise, it's not very impactful. Study what the competitors are doing and what is the standard trending font size. It will help you in finalizing the line length. As a result, you will be able to enjoy more interest of the readers.
• People are usually habitual of reading lowercase content. So avoid complete capitalization and only keep the first letter capital.
• If you want to emphasize a thing, you must consider using various functionalities such as underlining, bolding, and other similar techniques.
• You can also increase the font size when something too important comes in the way. For example, you can enlarge the font size for calls to action phrases.

Need more help? Reach out to the expert designers and businesses who have been successfully using the power of typography design and getting returning clients for years. Learning the market trends of your business niche will also help you understand what people are thinking about the particular fonts. 

 Created by Benedicto Cernal III

Conclusion

Well, keep in mind that the well-structured process is the ultimate goal of typography design. Various studies revealed that people who are experimenting by themselves performed better as compared to the ones who were given only the instructions. So don't forget to keep practicing and experiment with typography design. Another point to remember, that we can never neglect the psychological effects of words and fonts. Fonts and words are like bread and butter. If you can make the right combinations, all these are small considerations that could help you create many large impacts. I hope you enjoy reading this article! Don't forget to leave us a comment below. Cheers