Typography in Web Design
TL;DR:
- Good typography sets the emotional tone of your website before visitors even read your content
- Choose fonts that match your brand personality and work well on all devices
- Stick to one or two fonts maximum to keep things consistent
- Create clear hierarchy with different sizes, weights, and colours to guide visitors through your content
- Proper spacing and sizing make your content easier to read and more professional
Typography does more than just display your words. It's the first thing that communicates your brand's personality to visitors, often before they've read a single sentence.
Why Typography Matters
The fonts you choose send an immediate message about your brand. Light, rounded fonts feel friendly and approachable. Bold, geometric fonts suggest strength and professionalism. Your typography choice is making this impression whether you're intentional about it or not.
Good typography also makes your content easier to digest. When visitors can read your content comfortably, they're more likely to stick around and engage with your site.
Choosing the Right Fonts
Your fonts need to work hard on multiple fronts. They should reflect your brand's personality while staying readable across different devices and screen sizes.
Here's what to consider:
Brand alignment: Does the font match the feeling you want to create? A playful brand might use rounded, softer fonts, while a law firm would lean toward clean, traditional typefaces.
Readability: Test your fonts on different devices. What looks great on your desktop might be hard to read on mobile.
Versatility: Choose fonts that work well at different sizes and weights. You'll need them for headings, body text, and everything in between.
Keep It Simple
Limit yourself to one or two primary fonts across your entire site. This might feel restrictive, but it's one of the fastest ways to make your site look more professional and cohesive.
Use one font for headings and another for body text, or stick to a single font family and use different weights and sizes to create variety.
Create Clear Hierarchy
Hierarchy guides visitors through your content in the order you want them to read it. You create this through:
Size: Bigger text gets attention first
Weight: Bold text stands out from regular text
Colour: Different colours can highlight important information
Spacing: More space around text makes it feel more important
Your main heading should be the biggest, followed by subheadings, then body text. This creates a natural flow that's easy to follow.
Spacing and Sizing
Proper spacing makes your content breathable and professional. Too little space makes text feel cramped and hard to read. Too much space makes it feel disconnected.
Line spacing (the gap between lines of text) should be about 1.5 times your font size. For example, if your text is 16px, your line spacing should be around 24px.
Pixelhaze Tip: Always preview your typography on different devices before going live. What works on desktop doesn't always work on mobile.
FAQs
Why does typography matter more than just making text readable?
Typography communicates your brand's personality before visitors read your content. It sets expectations about your professionalism, approachability, and attention to detail.
How do I know if my font choices are working?
Test them on different devices and ask others for feedback. If people mention that your site is hard to read or looks unprofessional, your typography might be the issue.
Can I use more than two fonts?
You can, but it's usually better to stick to one or two. More fonts often make sites look messy and unprofessional unless you really know what you're doing.
What's the difference between web fonts and system fonts?
Web fonts are loaded from external sources and give you more design options. System fonts are already installed on devices, so they load faster but give you fewer choices.
Jargon Buster
Typography: The art of arranging text to make it readable and visually appealing
Hierarchy: Organising content to show what's most important first, usually through size, weight, and colour
Font: A complete set of characters in a specific style and size
Spacing: The gaps between characters, words, and lines that affect readability
Web font: A font loaded from an external source rather than using fonts already on the user's device
Wrap-up
Typography is one of those things that's easy to overlook but makes a huge difference to how professional and trustworthy your site feels. Take time to choose fonts that match your brand and create clear hierarchy. Your visitors will have a better experience, and your brand will look more polished.
The effort you put into getting your typography right pays off in how visitors perceive and interact with your content.
Ready to dive deeper into web design? Join Pixelhaze Academy for more practical advice.