When it comes to web and mobile UI design, typography is the art of organizing typefaces on the interface to make all copies readable, legible, and scalable to the audience. Visually appealing typography sometimes even catches the users’ attention and increases the interface conversion rate effectively.
Typography Terms:
Typeface: Typeface is a font family where the word “typeface” comes from physical print and refers to the faces of physical letter blocks. A typeface is composed of fonts—much like an album is composed of tracks or a book is composed of chapters. A typeface contains multiple font weights, and its style is shared across all characters, numbers, and symbols. All the fonts like- Arial, Times New Roman, and, yes, even Comic Sans are all typefaces.
Typefaces of Helvetica, Futura, Garamond, Bodoni, Univers, Gotham, Century, Caslon, Source Sans, Optima, Baskerville, and Minion.
Common typography elements:
Before diving into the actual aspects that you should involve to create better typography, let’s first see what basic elements you should pay attention to:
Fonts – As we all know, a font is a collection of letters and words with the same weights, widths, and styles, such as the well-known Times New Roman, Helvetica, and Garamond. There are 7 common types of font that are widely used in mobile or website UI design.
Typefaces – A typeface is a family of related fonts, like the common fonts like Serif and Sans Serif. Typeface often consists of several types of fonts.
Letter and line spacing – When it comes to the letter and line spacing, it depends on the distance between the letters and lines. Both of them affect the readability of interface copy directly.
Font weight, height, and size – The difference between weight, height, and size values define a font, helping designers create interfaces with different styles and emotional tones.
In one sentence, all these elements should always be considered when designing typography for your project.
What role does typography play in UI design?
In UI design, Typography is like a visual communication tool to engage users and convince them to stay longer or buy something.
When users visit any website or mobile app, they usually don’t read the texts line by line, instead of reading they often scan the entire page to see if there is data available that they need. At that moment, scannable and well-organized typography will make a positive impact and engage potential customers or users.
Typography is a kind of visual communication tool that conveys the interface content in a clear hierarchy and encourages users to stay longer, see the whole site or buy something.
When users stay on a page, a clear and informative typography design is needed to deliver product or service information precisely to encourage the user to place an order.
Never ignore the role of typography in designing UI.
- Choose the right typeface and font
Different typefaces and fonts have their own features with their individuality in order to give the users a completely different feel. The visual experiences they offer can be different from one another as well. So, you should always choose the right typeface and font so that can be the best for your design theme and style, delivering the page content in the right mood and tone.
For example, if you want to have an eye-catching font for an illustrated or cartoon style website, you may want the following bold, fat, and rounded font to catch attention for a split second.
- Do not use too many typefaces and fonts
To create a comfortable reading experience without any kind of disturbance, you should use a maximum of two typefaces in an app or website. Too many kinds of typefaces will conflict with each other, at that moment the user’s vision will also get conflict and won’t allow a natural reading experience due to too much noise on the screen.
Too many fonts may emphasize too many elements in creating unnecessary noises to distract users.
3. Pay attention to space
The next principle you should follow is to balance the space and elements on an interface. About the space, we will talk about two types of spaces:
White space
White space also known as negative space, that is the empty space between different elements and graphics. A website that contains proper white space, creates a clear layout and makes the webpage content easy for the user to read.
However, too much white space in the design may create an “empty” webpage, which also can make it boring for users to use and navigate around. On the other hand, not enough white space may also create a cluttered and crowded interface, that make it hard for users to find the information they need.
So, never forget to keep an eye on the white space whenever designing the typography, it is all about striking the right balance of enough white space with enough amount of information on the page.
- Text space
Just focusing on the space around the elements or block of texts, one also needs to pay attention to the space around the individual text itself, including the letter and line spacings so you can create a more readable as well as informative copy to deliver messages effectively.
Now I’ll share two tips that may help you:
- For large types of fonts or typefaces use tight letter spacing when designing, like headlines, banners, titles, etc.
- For smaller types of fonts or typefaces use looser letter spacing when designing, like body texts, error messages, or notifications for easier legibility.
4. Create a clear visual hierarchy
A website with a great visual hierarchy will also help users to find their information as fast as possible. So, for better typography design, you should also try to create a clear visual hierarchy to create attention.
In general, apart from the common elements like grid layouts, tables, and card designs, with the help of the following elements you can create a better visual hierarchy:
Headings and titles
Headings, sub-headings, titles, and subtitles are useful elements that are a greater way to use for creating a great text hierarchy.
5 .Make your typography scalable
To create the best user experience that attracts users, designers are often asked to create a website app that works well on desktop as well as on mobile. These requirements make the designers to design typography that scales well on different screen sizes.
It is a vital process of designing a website, one needs to define a scale from the outset for all fonts and typefaces. Also keep in mind to share the scale guidelines for all platforms, like Android, iOS, and Web platforms, with your team members, so everyone in the team will be aware of which platform or situation a font or typeface scale should be used.
6. Use visual contrast wisely
Applying visual contrast wisely will make the UI more legible and friendly to everyone. When designing the typography for your project, you can try to create strong visual contrast with the following process:
Color contrasts
Color is the top factor in any design that most designers use to create contrasts in UI design.
As you can see, the red and green colors that stand out from the white background and emphasize the error message effectively. It is not so easy for any users or visitors to miss out on such error messages with this exact visual.
So, these are some key considerations while creating an interface. That’s not all, though. Being a User Interface Designer necessitates a variety of skills. There is no such thing as an end to learning. You will learn more as you practice. Good luck with your studies. I wish you all a wonderful day. Please come along with us. We will provide you with additional information and design tips. So come along with us. Please leave a comment, like, share, and join Ecomclips if you find this information useful.
