Typography - overview

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Using the right font styles make your design stand out, this article talks about the importance of typography in design.

Have you ever been stuck in choosing the right font for your design for so long that it gets frustrating? Well, if you're anything like me (extremely indecisive) then you most definitely have. Choosing the right font has a prdominant effect on what your design wishes to convey. Let's go through a few points to help make quick decisions while choosing fonts and save a whole lot of time.

First, decide on the type of font you thing would fit the best.

There are various kinds of fonts that you can choose from:

  • Old style serif - Adobe Jenson, Goudy Old Style
  • Transitional serif - Times New Roman
  • Square sans-serif - 
  • Modern script - Roboto, Lato
  • Decorative - dingbats
  • Geometric sans-serif - Futura
  • Formal script.
  • Casual script - Comic Sans

Keep in mind the type of paper your font will be printed on, if you are going to be using a low-resolution printer, use a font with little or no fine lines and intricate details as they most likely will not be printed.

You have to pay good attention in ensuring that the visual aspects of the font and the overall design are not compromised in attaining a clear, readable font. 

Another important detail to keep in mind is font pairing. Font pairing is mixing and matching fonts that go well together. A safe bet is pairing a serif font with a sans-serif font, for example : Libre Baskerville and Montserrat, Helvetica and Georgia etc. Try to use a limited number of fonts to keep your design uniform-looking and less cluttered.

You can also choose your fonts by analysing the font weight, style, endings and details, texture, spacing etc.

Here are some typography resources you can use to up your font game:

  • Free fonts to download : there are loads of free fonts for you out there to download and use in your personal designs, if you wish to use them commercially then go through the license and other aspects carefully and purchase the font.
  • Font Finder : this is a free Google Chrome plugin that helps you find what font a website uses. This is a super helpful tool that I find myself using often. 
  • Google Fonts : Google Fonts is a library of various open source font families that you can use for free and are easy to integrate into your designs
  • Typewolf : this is a great resource to find some typography inspiration whenever you're having a little trouble choosing or pairing fonts.

 

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