Typography
People read all the time. It's not only books or magazines but various info on the Internet or even outside shops. However readers don't know how much time and effort it takes even for a single line. The text arrangement and the aesthetic look of fonts are among designers' top priorities. To create effective UI, we need to look into typography science.
Typography is something bigger than just a design technique. Typography transforms language into a decorative visual element. Typography has a longer history than the design or the Internet. It appeared approximately in the 11-12 centuries when people invented movable type system. Commonly, typography is defined as the art and science of font style, appearance, and structure which aims at delivering the aesthetic and easily readable text to readers. Not that long ago, it was a specialized study for editorial office workers but now the science is applied in different spheres and plays a significant role in design.
Nowadays, many designers use terms font and typeface as the synonyms but that's not quite right. Let's straighten it out. typeface is a style of type design which includes a complete scope of characters in all sizes and weight. A font, on the other hand, is a graphical representation of text character usually introduced in one particular typeface, size, and weight. A typeface is something like a family and fonts are parts of it. These two are the main objects which designers and typographers change to create readable and aesthetic text.
To separate different types of information and highlight the vital points, designers use fonts in different weight and size. The type weight is a measurement of how thick type character is. The sizes are usually measured in inches, millimeters, or pixels. The height of the character is also called x-height because the body of every character in one size is based on the letter x. This approach makes them look even. It's easy to segregate copy elements such as heading, sub-heading and body copy by varying these.
White space, also known as negative space, is the area between elements in a design composition. Readers aren't usually aware of the great role of the space, but designers pay a lot of attention to it. In case the white space is not balanced, text will be hard to read. That's why negative space matters as much as any other typography element.
As any other design element, typography should be structured. Typographic hierarchy is a system that organizes text in the best way for users' perception. It is aimed at creating the contrast between the most meaningful and prominent text elements which should be noticed first and ordinary text information. The contrast is created by regulating typography elements including typefaces, fonts, sizes, and colors as well as their alignment. Typographic hierarchy is presented with common types of text used in UI design. They are headlines, sub headers, body copy, call-to-action elements, captions, and others. These copy elements create distinct layers in design: primary, secondary, and tertiary.
The goal of any designer is to guide the user through information on the them media, whether it is paper or screen. The most common visual is text. With an understanding of typography, designers can guide the user with better clarity.