Have you noticed how much typography is used in the world around you? It is a part of the way your computer is presenting information to your right now. It is a part of the way this page looks, and it is even a part of how this article is talking to you. I am obsessed with typography. I love it and I love to play with it. If only I could do more and influence more people! I wrote this article because I love typography so much, in the hope those of you who have control over your own web design, online marketing, social media marketing, and SEO (search engine optimisation) will make better use of it.
· What is Typography? Typography comes from the Greek words meaning form and writing. It is the art and skill of presenting words and text with different fonts, colours, sizes and locations on a page to influence how that the reader reads information, and how the meanings of those words are influenced. Find a good advert by companies like Nike or Apple, and copy the text down into simple font, and compare the difference of meaning to you as a reader.
· Fonts. Fonts are a big part of typography. Have you stopped and considered how much a font actually impacts the meaning of what is being said. Words will mean what they mean, but they will have different levels of emphasis and influence over the total meaning. We can even break-up words and fonts to imply different meanings to.
· Size. Letter size has will also greatly impact meaning. These meanings are influenced by the way we see things. Size implies importance, and can change the nuance. Very small can be seen as important, and very big will too. The relationships between these will also influence the nuance and the meaning of the final statement.
· Colours. Colours have a lot of meaning no matter what culture or society you are from. They are not always the same, but there are commonalities that exist across the world. The best example of that I personally experience goes as follows. We were doing the research on this project, and were surprised to find the colour orange was the colour that no matter what culture you were from, you saw it as positive and a sign of a positive future. This was our recommendation to Hutchinson Wanpao and became the brand Orange, the global mobile phone network. And it has done extremely well since launch and has done nothing else but continue to grow. They have networks available in over 12 million customers in the UK alone and over 30 million customers worldwide. When we launched, it was the fastest growing operator for the 18 months to March 2001. I can only put that down to the colour orange, and the results we found – I could be wrong, and I am probably a little biased.
· Layout. Placement of words is very important. In normal writing, such as what you are reading now, our eyes follow as we are used to. With typography, whether that is for an advert, a written piece, or even a single message, by changing the location, we also change nuance and meaning.
Typography is more of an art than a science. It comes from practice and skill, and those who are skilled in it are those who are passionate about words and language. We can use it to develop our online marketing and Facebook marketing, and social media marketing in ways to influence how people feel about the words and language we use. I only have 18 years experience with typography, and this is my personal opinion. How you can make it work for you will be your own judgment and choice.
This is a Guest Post from Sachin
Hi Lawmacs, thanks for sharing about typograhy and it sounds cool thing if we implemented on website, but is this something we can use on WP blog?
maybe it’s applicable to all writing platforms. I pertaining to the typography itself. For me, it’s the art of writing. 😉
Typography plays an important role in making your blog appealing by creating a good design.
Hoping that you are doing fine Gary 🙂
Btw the link to the author is not working
I usually work as a web developer, but I need to get better with design. One of the things I learned about typography is that a lot of the default fonts are considered “ugly”, and you shouldn’t use more than 2 font types on a single page. It’s a surprisingly large field that I’m just starting to learn about.
Personally I believe that simpler is better. Of course you can do better looking designs on a simple layout, but adding too many elements seems distracting to me. I would prefer richer content to a better design.
To me the best site implies having great design and content, combined together. But starting with design is always important: you know what they say about the first impression, right?
I never tried this or may be i done but don’t know this is called as typography . Nice article which explained me a lot
Some days before that i also read another article on Typography and get the basic knowledge from there but you gives me all the basic and important points to adopt that.
keep up the right and great work . 🙂
Excellent information on typography indeed and yes, I agree with Shabnam that it is must for making your blog unique and attractive.
wow, what a good insight into typography, there’s more to it than meets the eye. This is the first real article that has explained it in such detail. Keep up the good work!
These are nice platforms to share your content. This will also help in increasing visits to your site hence more traffic.
It is amazing the amount of fonts available now on computers. As far as fonts having impact goes, I am reminded of the comic books I used to buy. They had some interesting lettering going on inside of them, especially for the sound effects of fight scenes and such.
Wow, I was quite impressed with your Orange experience. 🙂 Well, I love orange and yes, when I see it, it makes me glad and happy. 😀 It has that effect. In that case, I can really say that typography is really more of an art. 😀
Typography is a very important for the appearance of a blog.Keep informing as images and quality writing is the king of blogging.
It’s only after listening to the Steve Jobs Stanford speech that I truly realised how important Typography is. Attention to detail on elements such as this is what can make the difference between success and failure.
People that say don’t say attention to the look of your website and just concentrate on content have got it wrong. A/B testing has proven that looks make a hell of a difference!
Btw, your site has absolutely awesome and fresh Typography – what font is this?
Typography is best way to represent something different to our users. When Our client says that we need something unique, we go for typography art and try to represent the images in that way and it worked well so far.
Hey Sachin!
I really admire and appreciate your firm and well fabricated thoughts on Typography.Fonts,size and colors these are some major factors to be consider when you want to write your article with an eye catching appearance,it will help to throw a great impact on a readers mind.I really agree with you and i am practicing on it.
Thank you Gary for sharing such a great and valuable guest post on your blog.
Good Luck and God Bless!!
With Regards!
Samuel Joshua
The way of presenting the content is very important as same as the quality of the content. Thanks to sharing the basics thing about Typography.
Yes, Tessa I agree with you that quality contents can make the difference.
Typography is the design and use of typefaces as resources of message. It is measured to contain begun with Gutenberg and increase of portable type. But typography has its roots in handwritten letter-forms.
You made some good points there. I did a search on the topic and found most people will agree with your blog.
I absolutely agree with you that typography is more art than science, it is actually only art if you ask me! Because to create fonts, forms and colour shades is nothing but art!
I have found many blogs/websites designed well with graphics but less or no preferences to the typography.
If the blog is designed well but its not easily readable then whats the point of publishing it?
I really think Fonts end up having a huge impact on how a site looks. Really nice article and summary 🙂
Shall we repeat the good old thing again? 90% of what we receive as a message comes from what we SEE. Typography talks to us about what we’re reading even before we understand the words themselves.
Appearance is everything. It does not stop with picking the right font.
Picking the right layout to compliment the font is key also.
Finally, typography is starting to receivethe attention it deserves – both on and offline
People are aesthetes by nature. Presentation matters just as much as content. A blog about enticing people to join and donate to a charitable foundation done haphazardly with comical fonts will look as if it is not serious and may give off the impression that it is a scam. Typography will play a big part in conveying the right image and message to viewers and readers.
Very interesting article. I think the lack of web fonts has forced many designers to restrict creative typography to the odd header graphic or featured section. The rise of scripts like cufont open up the door to much more exciting websites without everything being inside images which isn’t very accessible.
These days Big fonts and large images are being used to make the website attractive and these really works.
I think typography is increditbly important online- it’s almost like your voice online, and really can represent your attitudes quiet strongly. Now if only we could ban comic sans from any content made for over 10s…
Some of websites really have some awesome typography and they look really well without using too much images.
Typography is an important tool for the company’s marketing. First impression are very important, so a company’s website has to be great looking and informative at the same time. Another important factor is spelling.
Hmm, I hope you liked it and will read more of our articles Arie! 🙂
These tips will be enough to generate ideas for writing a new blog post .
Very true, you have write a great post thank you.
Many thanks for the info keep sharing such posts.
Typography its great tool no body reminder about these things thanks for share…
I agree with you Gagan.
Perfect use of typography is very important. I dislike websites that go crazy with the use of font, whether in the kind of font they use, the color which they pick out for the crazy font, and how many different kinds of fonts there are the site.
While we all work online, we must remember that many readers read our blogs for enjoyment and if reading it becomes a chore due to bad typography, they will not read it. Great post with great tips.
Extremely great content. I actually became aware of your blog site and desired to tell you that I’ve quite liked looking through your blog and reports. Nonetheless I’ll be following your feed and I hope to browse your blog again.
Using typography is really very important and it is certainly a necessary tool for creating a great website. Thanks for sharing!
No doubt about it, typography is certainly an art. The way we write our mind speaks so much of our personality. And in this sense, the choice of font is indicative too.
Typography is essential element in creating your blog post become readable. Readability of text is very important in transmitting your message to your target audience through your blog. Also typography is important in designing a blog to make it look more attractive and appealing.
I agree with your words of experience Peter Park. Sometimes typography appears likely bad.
Thanks for sharing such beautiful blog post. The power of commenting and blogging provide a landscape for views and points
on a article. Again Thanks. online Watch free Movies Blog
Hi, Sachin.
Being in the web and graphic design world, I can really appreciate such posts as yours here. Yes, typography is indeed very important especially online where everything is visual. It is much like colours.
I am also quite impressed by your experience with the colour orange because I am into the meaning of colours as well and the emotions they evoke in people. In fact, I am using the color orange in my own website as well.
Thanks for this post, Sachin. 🙂
Typography is indeed important on websites to make your pages appealing to your visitors.
Very helpful tips. By following these tips one shold get some keen visitors in their web site because visitor’s tend to choose those blog site which provides properly clear and organised blog site.Thank you……….
Proper, organised and simple to use blog sites are more attracting to the users.By following these suggestions one can achieve a great rush of visitor’s for their sites. Thanks………
typography is really very important and it is certainly a necessary tool for creating a great website, Thanks for sharing such a valuable tips with us and valuable post please do keep posting.
Nice typography tips for online marketing, amazing post thanks for share this post here
Typography is one of the most artistic expressions. I love how people created their own writing style, like the Koreans, Japanese and the Thai.
Very happy to know the art Typography. I may learn this to improve my professional work.
Colors Scheme plays vital role in typography.Font size and style also have effects.
I am a huge typography/font geek and I encourage anyone who is at all interested in this ‘type’ of stuff (LOL) to check out the documentary called Helvetica. I believe its available on Netflix, Amazon, etc. Really interesting film all about fonts and their histories and implications on society!
Great Write Up, This definitely Important and contributes alot to the bounce rate of your page, how long people will stay. If the typograpgy is well done, i think people will stay longer on the website. For me nice and simple and not too muc information cramped on one page
Typography is really an good practice to do.
I have read so much articles with excellent typography which just give you immense pleasure to read.On the contrary here are many articles which are very nice and with valuable content but without proper typography.
This is the difference between the good and bad typography documents.
Hi lawmacs,
I agree on the importance of typography as a tool of communication. With Flash technology, I had fun several times to export embedded fonts from the project, so as to make special them and surprise the reader.
– Kurt
Hi lawmacs,
I agree on the importance of typography as a tool of communication. With Flash technology, I had fun several times to export embedded fonts from the project, so as to make special them and surprise the reader.
Indeed comic sans is one ugly ass font.
Surely i agree its key factor in order to get more visitors stay on site as well as improve the design , Its lil difficult to check fonts that are compatible with the mobile devices as well !
Nice sharing.
I agree that typography is an important tool for the company’s marketing.
First impression are very important, so a company’s website has to be great
looking and informative at the same time. Another important factor is spelling.
I think the lack of web fonts has forced many designers to restrict creative typography to the odd header graphic or featured section. Appearance is everything.
Typography is a great thing when it’s done right. Unfortunately, some people do understand typography as using Comic sans or crappy script fonts that we can’t even read properly.
I never tried Typography as part of my website and reading this post made me realize that i missed a lot of opportunity in an artistic point of view that’s also beneficial in online marketing. I’ll try this out and hopefully i can do it right. Thanks for sharing Gary!
Yes typography is very important for the pages since it will affect the readers way of reading too. If we want our readers to stay longer and want them to read more, we need to make it easy for them by improving on our page’s typography.
I have been a webmaster for many years and have seen a lot of industries change for the better as well as the worse due to the effects of the Internet. But the real estate industry has suffered the worst because of the big real estate websites. These websites control the search engines with brute force SEO making it next to impossiable for the average real estate agent to have an effective website.
But the effectiveness of brute force SEO is growing weaker and the skillful use of Web 2.0 technology for SEO is changing the playing field. It is now possiable to rank a webpage on top of Google with 0 PageRank ahead of Homes.com, Realtor.com and the other big sites with 6-7 PageRank in as little as 3 to 6 months! So if you are a real estate agent, there is hope on the horizon.
Robert McCulloch
For your readers’ sake, just make your presentation simple. Simple fonts, readable text color that goes with the color of the background.
I like this concept. I visited your blog for the first time and just been your fan. Keep posting as I am gonna come to read it everyday..