Our focus in this article will be to discuss some of the pressing reasons as to why typography is important.
If you’re not already aware of what typography is, simply put, typography is the way in which text is arranged and designed. Factors such as font size, font colour, and the font itself, all play a part in typography. Today we’ll be showing you the top 10 reasons that typography is important.
Reason #1 – Conveys a Tone
Firstly, typography can help to convey the tone of whatever it is you’re creating. Perhaps you’re creating a poster to advertise your services in which case, you don’t want to use a cartoon themed font – anything but that. You have to find a font set that is appropriate for your text.
There are a few things that you can ask yourself when defining a font set, such as:
– Would coloured text be appropriate here?
– Is small or large font more suitable?
– Is this an appropriate place to add a heading?
– Have I overdone it?
When you’ve started to make every sentence a different colour – you’ve overdone it and you’re heading in the wrong direction.
All in all, conveying an appropriate tone can be achieved with the right font set.
Reason #2 – Conveys Professionalism
On posters, this may not be an essential thing to remember, but for businesses, it can be useful to know that typography can make you look at a lot more professional. It might sound silly to say but with the right font arrangements in place, your audience is more likely to be sucked into reading what you have to say.
If marketing is something that you want to pursue with your business then learning all about typography will work wonders for your marketing campaign.
To add to the professionalism that a proper typography arrangement provides, your readers are more likely to read a more appealing resource than they are one which isn’t.
Reason #3 – Grabs the Reader’s Attention
When you’re writing an article (or designing something) then you have to take a moment to imagine your competitor’s creation alongside yours.
Let’s say you’re a business, for example, and you’re designing a new website. Place your website alongside your competitor’s website and think to yourself, “If I were a customer, which website would I use?”.
When you use typography properly, you can grab your audience’s attention by (as we discussed above) conveying a certain tone. You might find that by taking advantage of typography that your website will begin gaining a much higher volume of traffic. With the right font set in place, you’re grabbing the attention of your audience before they’ve even seen what your business is about.
Reason #4 – Holds the Reader’s Attention
Once you’ve grabbed the attention of the reader, it’s just as important to continue to hold their attention to make sure that they read everything that you have to say. In fact, it’s a lot easier to grab a reader’s attention than it is for you to hold that same attention.
Even if you have written an extremely boring chunk of text (which let’s face it, we all have to do every once in a while, and have no control over doing so), typography can take that boring text and still manage to maintain the reader’s attention and interest.
Although it requires you to be more creative, if you approach it the right way then typography can make your text look a whole lot better – perhaps consider taking a visual and graphic approach for the more mundane texts that you write.
Reason #5 – Conveys a Message with Your Texts Appearance
Even though it might not seem like it, you can use the appearance of your text to convey a message. It’s difficult to do, but even attempting to do so will make your text look a hell of a lot better.
For example, if you’ve written an article about a recent financial scandal and your audience is businessmen, it should be obvious that you should use a font size which conveys a “serious” tone. By doing this, your readers will realise before they’ve even started to read that your article has a serious tone – just from the appearance.
A bad example of this would be to write a financial article with a cartoony font, larger font than necessary, and using coloured text – unless you’re writing about clowns, this is something that should always be avoided.
Reason #6 – Provides a Smooth Reading Experience
This should go without saying but if your text doesn’t provide a smooth reading experience (e.g. there are no breaks in the text, there’s a lack of headings, or the reader feels as though no effort has been put into the text), then you’ll lose a lot of your audience very quickly.
When you use typography, you can make it clear when one section begins and another end, you can highlight important sections (just don’t over-highlight, it looks hideous), and you should always use a font which is appropriate to your text.
Alternatively, you can have a bland piece of writing that readers will quickly dismay and will then move on to reading something else.
Reason #7 – Improves the Formatting
Formatting is more applicable to text which is on a computer (e.g. writing essays, publishing articles, etc) but nonetheless, it’s worth taking note of.
Let’s take writing an article as our example. The purpose of an article is to grasp the reader’s attention, hold that attention (as we discussed earlier), and provide an interesting read to them in doing so. This is only achievable if you format your articles properly – it’s virtually impossible to achieve these things without formatting, so don’t even waste your time!
Formatting with typography includes the addition of hyperlinks, using headings (as we’ll discuss below), using HTML (for things such as lists), or even adding buttons.
Reason #8 – Establishes a Text Hierarchy
Typography doesn’t apply as much here, although it does slightly.
When we say “text hierarchy”, we are referring to the way in which text is structured. Headings, paragraphs, images – all of these things come together and if formatted properly, create a smooth text hierarchy.
Now, this is where typography comes into play. With the help of typography, you can create appropriate headings (just as we have done in this article) so that readers have an easier time reading your text.
On the other hand, if no text hierarchy is in place then readers will get lost easily, will struggle to read your text, and will most likely move on to something else.
Reason #9 – Brings Your Text Together
When a page of text has no “harmony” and doesn’t look as though it should be together, you have to look into altering your current typography.
With the appropriate typography arrangement, you can bring your text together. The simple things such as using a consistent font and keeping your font size the same (unless the text is a heading) will all contribute to keeping your font together.
Reason #10 – Improves Appearance Overall
All in all, typography can make your text look a lot better and less bland. Nobody will choose to read a boringly formatted chunk of text so next time you’ve written an article or you’ve created a poster, make sure that you’ve used typography to your advantage!