Fonts are a key component for an effective display of content. Besides attraction and readability, they unconsciously improve or hinder the viewer’s perception of the text even prior to reading it. This article attempts to demonstrate how typography adds value to the text and helps you select the right font in accordance with your purpose and target audience.
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Font weight
The font weight is often what we lay our eyes on first. Bold, regular and light are the most common ones. The regular weight is the most convenient for an easy comfortable reading thanks to its letters. It conveys neutrality. To convey softness, light font styles are a perfect choice. For example, old English calligraphy is known for its beauty. Bold font styles, on the other hand, convey audacity if that is the aim.
Thin or light font styles are used to make a text beautiful. But as soon as you avert your eyes, the text fades away. No wonder these font styles are prominent in the makeup, fashion and fragrant industries since they have overtones of femininity.
Semi-bold font styles are often used to foreground a part in a text. Making a phrase unique, notable and readable, these are often found in logos.
Bold font styles are also designed to foreground certain aspects. Yet, they are not that readable. The human brain needs time to adapt to deciphering them.
Black fonts are used to add weight and heaviness which enhances the effect of the already existing properties of the font. They are often used in games, ads or show business for their ability to quickly extract emotions from the viewers.
Font width
Width of the font is as important as weight. It makes the content clear and readable. Regular width is highly recommended to ensure a comfortable reading experience. Nonetheless, compressed or extended styles are used to make certain emotional impacts.
Slightly condensed fonts come in handy when you have too much content and so little room for it. Compressed versions of text do not demand too much extra reading efforts but readers can tell that there is a problem of space limitations.
Extra condensed font styles are unique in the sense that their vertical lines make them prominent in the text. However, since letters are very much tight and confined, this font demands a lot of reading efforts. That is why it is better to apply it on short expressions that you want to highlight in the text. It creates a moment of pause. That is why extra condensed front styles are usually employed in marketing or commercial announcements.
Extended and extra extended font styles are great for a slow-motion effect on the reading process. Applying these font styles makes graphemes appear more horizontal. They are one way to highlight certain parts making them remarkable and catchy. They add more value and abundance to the text. As far as legibility is concerned, our perspective can compensate proportions, which makes reading comfortable. You can find these font styles attached to sporting products or used on cars and airplanes.
Font contrast
Font contrast refers to the interplay between thin and thick strokes. Contrast affects the writing’s clarity and legibility. For long reads and a neutral effect, low and medium contrast is the choice to go with. To set special moods or convey certain imageries, extreme values, mono-weight or high contrast is the key.
Contrast adds a sense of sophistication to the text. Without it, the piece of writing is neat and elementary with no special effects. Mono-weight fonts are what set the difference between hand-lettering and type-setting. They convey a sense of modernity and novelty since they incarnate industrial and postindustrial urban aesthetics from stick to neon letters.
Extra high contrast goes well with the proprieties of Romanticism and Classicism calligraphy fonts. Contrast fonts add a further dimension of beauty at the expense of readability. Interchangeability between thick and thin strokes is evocative of paradoxes that contribute to the elegance, sophistication and charm of any artistic manifestation or beauty work be it theater or fashion.
X-height
The X-height, also known as the corpus size, is the height that separates lowercase letters from upper-case ones. It sets the tone of the message through the oscillation of case-letters height.
Medium X-height (from 2/3 to 3/4) is probably the easiest to work within a text because to keep the balance of height oscillations between upper and lower case letters. That is why; it is easy for the readers to track the beginning and end of each sentence and keep a continuous linear reading process. Hence, Medium X-height does not decrease readability.
If you want to render the font more interesting and dynamic, you can use the small X-height which is about ½ or less because it creates an important variation of height between the letters. The greater the difference, the greater is the degree of artistry and uniqueness. The extrovert characteristics of this design make it great for lyrical texts, personal cards, romantic texts or invitations.
Unlike small X-heights, large lowercase letters are introvert fonts that reflect reticence, stability, and shyness. This font ensures a similarity between the different letters. This font allows you to include more content in a single space. Yet, it disrupts the interaction between the lines and spaces.
Corner Rounding
This is when words’ terminals, whether sharp, square or rounded, intermingle and connect. Letters like T, H, and E have square corners, A, V, Z and N have rather sharp ones. The sharper the corner in writing, the more it becomes noticeable or even focused on because it is more visually challenging for our human perception. Luckily, we are endowed with the capacity to recognize sharp ends.
Making terminals round adds a sense of softness and comfort to the text and soothes our perception. Roundedness is less irritating for the eyes to gaze at and it goes well with our natural human instinct that is why; we feel some assurance looking at writings attached to baby food, shampoos or diapers. They are reminiscent of fruits and buns and due to their friendly-like character, bold and round shaped fonts are also found on hand-made good.
Sharp corners are great for creating tension and disturbance within the viewers. That is why it is often used in marketing “thrills” because the target audience which is usually teenagers, needs a sensation of edginess or risk. Sharp corners fonts are suitably express subversive rebellious sub-communities like heavy metals or rock.
Italics and oblique
Italic and oblique font styles, like straight ones, are known and popular in use in modern font classifications. However, they serve different purposes.
These font styles are inspired by the Italian calligraphy during the Renaissance era. .Since the 16th century, it has been applied to bring certain ideas to the fore. This obliquity in the line indicates a change of intonation.
The curviness of the graphemes adds elegance, civility, and formality to the message. Given the fact that they are similar to hand lettering, they are more effective and direct when addressing or approaching readers. That is why curved font styles are the perfect choice to go by when typing welcoming cards or invitations though they might diminish the effect of end rounding terminals.
Besides highlighting, curving vertical letters conveys speed in message communication. Inviting sensations of rapidity, thrill, and immediacy, arch shape fonts are usually featured in the sports or automobile industries.
Serifs and slab serifs
Fonts with serifs trace their origins back to ancient times indicating their usage for specific purposes. Since Ancient Rome, there always has been an overall special structure upon which fonts were created and serifs were shaped.
Serif fonts are usually used to write literature or scientific and educational papers. Times New Roman is amongst the popular ones. Having serifs at the end of strokes helps perception to flow and move from one line to another with the least visual irritation. Even when serifs are of light sharpness, comfortable reading is retained since the baseline and the letter height are preserved.
Generally speaking, serifs are culture-specific. Their historical background makes them the spokesman of the entire era and civilization in which they were born and during which they thrived. To what extent they would impact on the viewer is depended on the latter’s cultural knowledge. However, even viewers with the least familiarity with history can tell if the font that is being used is authentic and historical. Except for slab serifs, all font serifs like Venetian Serif, Classical Serif or English Serif, align with the refinements of their era’s rhetoric, hence, a sense of trustworthiness and elegance in communication. In this context, Hollywood often uses Trajan as a convenient typeface in films due to its strong authentic spirit especially Roman Square capital fonts.
Slab serifs, on the other hand, are separately classified. A serif becomes a slab when it is significantly rectangular, linear or as thick as the main font stroke. This feature makes unsuitable for a comfortable reading experience. Nonetheless, they carry overtones of special places from the Wild West to 1930s Germany. Such letters are better drawn and stamped than written with calligraphic tools. And since they are reminiscent of male rigidity and patriarchal ideologies, they are often used in factories warehouses and hand-tool shops.
Geometry
In every digital font design, there is an underlying geometric formula governing the way each letter is constructed. Each formula holds attributes; several meanings shaping the font’s character and defining its particular functions. However, some font designs reject the principals of geometry. Font families similar to handwriting rely more on spontaneity rather than calculated measures. For most of the font designs, glyphs are marked with a scale of standards varying from humanistic to geometric proportions.
Humanist design is inspired by the Renaissance Age’s calligraphy, that’s why they are called as such. Fonts pertaining to this design have angled stress axis and open varying-width glyphs with a significant distinction between capital and small letters. These features make these fonts pleasant and legible.
With Humanist writing styles, geometry’s role is to add more perfection to the shapes without adding images. Their features make them convenient for communication and popular in use. That’s why; urban navigations always feature Sans Serif typefaces with humanist proportions. Inspired by Constructivism, the first geometric fonts to ever been made from scratch emerged during the 1920s and 30s. Round, square or triangular were the 3 main shapes on which characters were shaped. Today, they are referred to as Geometric Sans Serifs and Geometric Slab Serifs.
Sophisticated technological means and tendencies towards simplification and minimalism created the need for an alternative type form. Round letters like O, C, D can take in a square shape and shapes can be easily stripped off of the power to affect readability or sensations. A whole font can be designed relying on unified modules and a simple sketch can be the main source of inspiration. Thus, breaking with the traditions of lettering and typing.
The whole process depends on the module shape, being it a bow and polygon. To better represent an era of clever technologies, scientific wonders, and artificial intelligence, TV-shows like Star Wars or Terminator use futuristic digital modular fonts. The choice of a geometric font is not to be arbitrary or fortuitous; it has the power to escort visitors through time. The choice of font can be a flight ticket to innovative Russia if you use rectangles, sticks or triangles. Triangles, circles and thin strains can bring back the American jazz age. For a scientific futuristic flavor, squared letters, matrices and pixels are great to immerse the readers into the world of machinery.
The 2015 Google brand is proof that Geometric Sans Serifs are still trending and applicable. Recently, the vogue is to use more sophisticated geometric fonts that are more expressive of our contemporary lifestyle. International companies and media apply them for they represent a great option since they are graceful and chic yet they guarantee accuracy and clarity in reading.
Statics and dynamics
The more a text maintains vertical and horizontal lines, the more it is perceived as static, the more there are variations in shape letters, the more it is creative and dynamic. In fact, character shapes vary between stillness and dynamicity. Static fonts like Helvetica convey composure and regularity. Squaring ovals add more verticality to the font, thus, more strictness and restrictedness. That explains why static fonts are used to control access to manufacturing or railroad facilities.
Dynamic fonts are suitable for any artistic manifestation due to their covert intricacy and high degree aestheticism. They are the result of serifs shape, terminals of letters like s, c, or a, gradient of lines like in e or the cause of stress axis slant in letters like o, c, e, d, p, and b. All these can have a vertical, curved or diagonal silhouette. To add more dynamicity, italic font styles can be applied.
Openness of letters
Openness is concerned with characters like a, e, s, and c. The degree of the aperture can change the shape of these letters. They can be, wide open, half open or almost closed.
Width of wide-open letters adds much to the capacity of the font which makes them more compact than closed ones. Reports on frequency analysis of languages in cryptanalysis show that, for a fact, letters like e, a, s, c occur by over 30% than other combinations of letters in English. Hence, wider openness and slight squaring of oval characters like o, p, b, and q make up a good practical font that ensures readability and does not look too dense. PT Sans, for example, falls into the same category of designs that ensures eligible visual communication.
Half-closed letters are mostly used in road signs or on license plates because they are the easiest to process however, their openness does not add a special effect.
Wide-open fonts imply extraversion, honesty in communication and openness in nature, not just shape which makes them effective in approaching human beings. They are the tool by which left-wing politicians or promoters of freedom and democratic principles spread their ideologies, especially during electoral campaigns. Wide-open fonts are also used to market classy practical utilities like laptops or smartphones.
Right-wing politicians like conservatives or nationalists use closed fonts to best represent their intentions and ideologies. Closed fonts, though connote an enclosed introvert reserved nature, their closed aperture is suggestive of security, stability, and solidity.
Summary
Some people take choice fonts for their content for granted. Little do they know how much fonts can impact the audience’s reaction to the text. Each font design carries with it a set of cultural meanings that indirectly touches the individual’s psyche perception and reception of the communicated message. That is why; your selection of fonts should align your intended message, your field and target audience. However, it is advisable that you don’t use too much fonts. That might fire back and damage your work instead of polishing it. So, make apply only minimum features to ensure winning the audience over. Also, pay attention to typographic composition and how your content is segmented and laid out, they are as important as fonts.
