Typography Matters
If your designer doesn’t know why the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog, or who the members of the serif family are, your brand might be in need of a makeover.
What is Typography?
Typography is the design and arrangement of words to make language visual. It’s one of many essential design foundations that advertisers need to master. Typography includes everything from the spacing between individual letters, lines and words to the colour, scale and font used.
Typography affects the overall look and feel of any design. It helps set the mood and tone for your brand, and works in harmony with your photos and other visual elements to sell your concept.
Why Does it Matter?
Almost everything around you has an aspect of typeset; meaning that it was designed to look a specific way to serve a particular purpose. Just like you need to dress for your size and body type, any typesetter knows it’s not appropriate to use a display font for the copy of an ad.
Steve Jobs took a class in college on calligraphy and it influenced the design of the first Mac. “If I had never dropped in on that single calligraphy course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts” Steve Jobs. You can thank beautiful typography for inspiring the look of Apple products to this day.
Typeface Specifics
Many people simply think of fonts when it comes to typography, but there are many elements at play including:
Leading: The spacing between the baselines of text.
Kerning: Adjusting the space between individual letters to
achieve visual balance.
Proportional: Letters have varying width
Monotype: All letters have the same width
Serif: Fonts with semi-structural details
Sans Serf: Fonts without these details
And that’s just scratching the surface!
There are many other subtle differences
and definitions that experts learn in schools
or in the trade.
Typography is a craft that requires creativity, discipline and commitment. Working with an expert means having the assurance that every project is treated with the utmost detail required to communicate your messages effectively and position your brand in the right light.