We use words because they mean something to us. But its not just the dictionary definition of a word that affects our understanding of it. The way the word is shaped influences the way we interpret the words.

Good typography should look attractive, but it should also help the reader to use the words on your page. Typography can add structure to your web page. As many designs say “the web page should be designed for the content not design and then the content added last”. The idea of typography is that it brings the page together.For example, when you open a page the first thing you will probably look at is the title because it normally larger and heaver then the other content on the page. Then you will probly look at the other text on the page witch stands out due to its color and font.

The most used way of getting the users attention is to use ‘Bold‘. As it is darker then the ordinary texto so you’r eye’s are drawn to it. 

On the latest Boagworld Podcast they talk about typography.  Below is a extract taken from one of there interviews. 

Mark: So, there’s a couple of psychologists, a few years ago did a study where they had a jam stall and they had 26 varieties of jam and nobody bought any and then they reduced the jam varieties down to six and sales increased by 10 and it’s just the choice.

Paul: Even as a designer you can, you can open up Photoshop, look down that font list and go “crap!”

Paul: You could almost be overwhelmed.

Mark: Well, yeah.

 

So as designers we are faced with the quastion ‘what font do we use and why’. Well as Paul Say’s You could almost be overwhelmed. This is true becasue there are so many thousand fonts out that and you don’t passably need that many. All you need is the kind of font that does its job.

So how do you decide what fonts to use.

Well there are many resources in books and online witch explain what fonts do what purpose. e.g. Garamond gives a professional look unlike RickysHand which gives a friendly look. But we need to learn why we cart use all fonts on the web.Well we carnt always use fonts that we would us on print on the web. For most operating systems, there’s a very limited set of fonts that come preinstalled. These fonts are usually the most commonly used fonts across both major OSs, and on the internet – staples like Times New Roman, Courier, Helvetica, and various other serif fonts. 

When i have found a font what do i need to cheek?

There are three main things you need to do when you have found a font that you think is suitable for your website.

First make sure of its size. This can be determined from common sense and also your target audience. If you know you are getting older visitors make sure that it is easy to adjust what size the font is, or just have it on a large size anyway. 

Secondly you need to make sure the contrast is correct. Its best if you make sure the colors go well together and are easy on the. A good example of what now to do is green and red witch will often be hard to read and look at.

And the last is leading. This is increasing the space between the lines witch can slightly improve the legibility of your text. This is very easy to do in Css. The code is – body { line-height: 1.5; }