TYPOGRAPHY AND THE WEB

Typography is part and parcel of our visual world, allowing us to distinguish CNN from NBC or Taco Bell from McDonald’s. Yet, most people tend to ignore it. The only time people really notice typography is when a composition doesn’t work or they can’t read the type. Technology is changing our relationship to type rather quickly. Anyone who has the right software package can design a typeface and create a layout, though probably not very well.

There are any number of guidelines and standards on typography for print materials, which made me wonder how the rules differ when designing for the Web. It seems there are significant differences, and these are created and complicated by the fact that each line of text, each font and typestyle is recreated by the user’s Web browser, server and computer operating system. Two resources on the Web offer a logical presentation of issues to consider when designing for the Web: Access by Design and Webstyle Guide. Here are a few basics that relate specifically to typography:

• Typefaces are rendered at lower resolution on the Web, and this affects legibility. Times New Roman, considered the most legible typeface for print materials, does not translate well to the screen. Better choices would be Georgia, Verdana, and Trebuchet, all of which come with most operating systems. However, dense text passages are likely to be printed out by the user. If a website builder suspects that users will print out the text, then Times New Roman remains a good choice.
• Left justification of text is safest to reproduce and easiest to read on the Web. Technological issues make it hard to control for excess space and other problems that may arise with full justification, and right justification is simply hard to read. As for headlines, when type is left justified, they should be, too.
• On most Websites, line lengths are too long for easy reading. While restricting line length is complicated by technological issues, a line length of fifty to seventy characters per line remains the ideal.
• As with print materials, the standard combination of upper and lower case characters enhances readability.
• Italics, bold, and underlined and colored text are variations that make it easier for goal-oriented Web users to scan for information. The use of all capitals for this purpose is, not surprisingly, less effective.

Obviously, I’ve just scratched the surface of this issue. There are a tremendous number of resources with variations on the theme. While researching this subject, I came across two interesting tidbits with which I will close this discussion...

Who knew? Helvetica typeface is celebrating its 50th birthday this year with an independent documentary film by Gary Hustwit. The film examines the proliferation of Helvetica in our visual world as part of a larger conversation of our global visual culture and how type affects our lives.

Check out Mark Simonson’s humorous piece, Let’s Talk Type, which he wrote in 1977, but contains a few eternal truths!