How can you quickly apply typographic rules to regain control of your layouts by following these 10 golden rules of typography? These rules are distilled down from the things that Chris learned during his time attending Art Center College of Design.
Generally speaking, there are two types of typography– expressive typography (type is visual, carries the meaning of the word and sometimes appears as physical shapes) and functional typography (type that is meant to be read). Let’s focus on the latter for this video.
When starting out, it is best to learn the fundamentals of good design: hierarchy (primary, secondary and tertiary reads), flow (how a person “reads” the layout by following the movement of their attention), legibility (in Western culture, type is read top to bottom, left to right, so it’s important to arrange type accordingly), grouping (organizing blocks of type in intelligent and logical groups) and interest, achieved through contrast (scale, texture, color, density, negative space).
Here are some rules of thumb to follow when using functional typography:
1. Justify Left
In Western culture, people read top to bottom, left to right, so justify your text left. This makes it easier for the person reading to navigate through the copy.