8 Do’s & Don’ts Of Typography

Do Separate Your Text Boxes

This is especially true when you’re writing small lines of text. I know it’s tempting to create one big text box and space out lines of text using the ‘enter’ key for the illusion of separate lines of text. Unfortunately, that is not a good way of separating lines of text. The flexibility of moving around sperate text boxes is not on the same level as using the enter key—it’s much better!

Do Use Character & Paragraph Styles

If you have a lot of text on your canvas and you want to change the look of many different textboxes, you can do so very easily if they all have character/paragraph styles applied to them. Character and paragraph styles allow you to automatically apply pre-defined font styles to your text, in one easy click. If you ever change your character/paragraph style, all the text with that specific style applied to it will change automatically. No need to manually change the font styles of each text box.

Do Use Hierarchy

Clearly showing the hierarchy of your text (i.e. title, heading, body) makes it so much easier to read. It’s also easy on the eyes!

Do Use Line Spacing

Another way to make your text easier to read is by applying sufficient spacing in between lines of text.

Don’t Use Forced Small Caps

Unless the font comes with its own small caps style, it’s actually not in good practice to force small caps.

Don’t Stretch Type

Don’t stretch your type! Stretching your type is deviating from the fonts intended design. Stretching your fonts distorts your type—it’s not a good look.

Don’t Make Text Too Small

This is more common than you think, especially on blogs and magazines where readability should be a priority! Personally, I think that designers use small text when they place more importance on aesthetics than actual user experience and readability of their content. Fortunately, user experience on the web is now being recognized as a huge aspect in design. It’s not just an after-thought.

Don’t Use Many Different Fonts On a Page

There are commonly three main parts of type on a webpage—the title, heading, and body text. Using three different fonts for all three parts is ok. However, on a blog or website where readability is important, I recommend using two fonts—one for titles and headings, and one for body text. Naturally, you can be a bit more flexible for more creative projects both for web and print. Overall, I’d say that using more than three fonts on a web page is overkill.