At some point, all of us have created something for someone else to read, but have you ever really considered the intended reader’s experience? Great design and effective typography provide an excellent, enticing experience so that the message gets across to the target audience.

What is Readability?

There is a difference between legibility and readability. You can present a group of text that can be interpreted, but that does not mean it will be easy or enjoyable to read. The emotional aspect of a certain design plays a significant role in readability. It is not whether or not your target market can read your message, but whether or not they will WANT to read your message.

How Reading Works

Novice designers often make the mistake of assuming viewers will read a print design the same way they do. While that would certainly make things easier, reading is a much more complex task than that. Someone reading a print advertisement in a busy café will probably read it differently than someone reading it with no distractions.

As you read, your eyes move across the page with the text. Your brain calculates on the positive and negative spaces within the typography, but quickly changes these calculations into mental imagery. This is what happens when good writing and great typographic design produce readable work. The viewer is much more likely to get your message in this scenario.

Typography: Web vs. Print

One of the advantages print typography has over digital typography involves control over the medium. Website designers have very little to no control over the device and lighting a viewer uses. That means that they have to make their typography look great regardless of viewing size, contrast or brightness.

Print designers should use this advantage to make the most out of their typography. If a designer knows the medium they will be printing on and the general environment the print will be viewed from, they can skip all the techniques web designers have to use to keep their typography adaptable.

For example, a web designer using typography on a site’s home page must make sure that his design works well with all screen sizes, but a print designer can get creative with sizes/colours/fonts and other elements to make the typography stand out on its particular medium.

Much like a toddler pressing down on the keys of a piano, simply throwing words on a piece of paper won’t ever get you the best possible success rate. In the hands of a good designer, typography can mean the difference between a few leads and thousands of new customers!

The post The Psychology behind Great Typography appeared first on Graphics & Website Design Portishead.

When working with almost any design/marketing agency, it is increasingly important to understand how fonts work and how valuable they are to a complete design. Your designer should help guide you in the right directions, but you can better communicate your needs by gaining a better understanding of typography.

The Difference between a Typeface and a Font

One of the most common mistakes in this area of design is the misuse and interchanging of these two terms. It is important to understand that a typeface is actually just one individual piece of a font. Fonts refer to an entire grouping of similar typefaces. For example, let’s look at a common font called Lucida.

As you can see, there are many different typeface variations within the primary font, Lucida. Each typeface offers its own unique set of characteristics, but still resembles the main font. Understanding many different typeface choices is an important step in the development of a designer.

Important Font Terms

Due to the massive amount of fonts available today, no individual designer will ever know every font out there. However, knowing the important terms in the font world provides a foundation for understanding all fonts in general.

Serif refers to a slight projection at the tail-end of a stroke, typically found on the bottom of letters. Many refer to these projections as “little feet.” They help the eye flow through sentences more easily. Sans Serif, on the other hand, is the opposite of the Serif font and has no “little feet.”

Script is a popular font type known for presenting a professional and light appeal. Diplomas, certificates and other formal designs/documents use this font type. It does not, however, work well in small areas or paragraphs of copy.

Display, widely-used on promotional materials such as banners and posters, grabs attention and provides emphasis in specific elements. It is not the right choice for long copy.

Hand Lettering refers to family of different font types that include hand-rendered elements or characteristics. Whether the font looks like it has been written by a child or by a teacher on a chalkboard, these fonts can supply a human element to a design.

Why it Matters

For some, it is hard to believe that small changes in different font types can actually have a significant impact on a design or marketing campaign. Does font choice really change consumer behaviour?

The answer is yes, and it has been proven time and time again. PepsiCo’s Tropicana brand provided one great example of the importance of font choice during their rebranding decisions in 2009.

Take a look at the font choice the company made with the “Tropicana” name. They changed from a classic font type to a more contemporary, sans serif-style font. Just two months after this change, Tropicana sales were down by an unheard of 20 percent! This font choice may have cost the company tens of millions of dollars. The company quickly cancelled the new look.

Even the tiniest of details can mean the difference between success and failure in the design world. Professional designers play an extremely important role in helping companies gain market share and avoid promotional mistakes.

The post Can your font speak louder than your words? appeared first on Graphics & Website Design Portishead.

How do typefaces get their name?

Back then I never really thought too much about how or why fonts got their names or ironically, that someone must have designed them. Before ‘Desktop Publishing’ appeared, seemingly allowing the world and his dog to become design consultants overnight, not too many people outside of the design industry gave too much thought to typefaces. Choosing which font to use would have never entered most people’s world back then. Of course these days everyone who has ever typed a letter on a computer will be aware of fonts and the vast amount of different ones that are available.

A while ago I noticed that, on the face of it (no pun intended), what looked like the same font as Helvetica was appearing in my list as a typeface called Switzerland. Obviously I’m aware of trademarks and licensing and realise that if you make a very similar font you can’t just go stealing someone else’s trademarked name, but why Switzerland? Normally when fonts are copied (ah, erm, I mean when a very similar one is created!) they normally tend to be given names that sound similar. A good example of this is Garamond (original font) – Garamand (similar, normally free font). So why was I not seeing Helvatican, Helvy, Elvatica or some such similar name? To understand the answer I had to explore the history of this popular font.

Helvetica was the most used typeface of the twentieth century and still remains one of the top 5 most used fonts in the world today, with the likes of Apple, NASA and Microsoft noted as fans. It actually started life in 1957 as a typeface called ‘Neue Haas Grotesk’, designed by Max Miedinger and Edouard Hoffman of the Haas’sche Schriftgiesserei (Haas Type Foundry) of Münchenstein, Switzerland. So why the name Helvetica? Well a company called Linotype adopted the font and increased the family range (condensed, light, expanded, extra bold, etc…) and, in 1960, renamed it Helvetica from the latin name for Switzerland: Confoederatio Helvetica (hence why we see CH on Swiss cars travelling abroad!). The font was marketed as a symbol of cutting-edge Swiss technology and Helvetica went global overnight.

So, knowing the history it all becomes as clear and easy to understand as the typeface itself.

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