Last weekend I visited my old school, with some of my ex-classmates, to take a look at the graduation projects of all the last year students. Besides the quality level of certain projects, there was one thing that really caught my attention: lack of good typography.
I saw some really strong concepts with stunning graphics, but almost every project had bad typography;
- Bad font choices
- Poor font-size: too big or too small
- Sometimes almost unreadable/scan-able texts
- Inappropriate alignment
- Line height - anyone?
One way or the other: the typography just didn’t match the concept or design, nor it was easily readable or scannable. That’s weird because to me good typography is part of the concept and global user experience. When your content is textual, you should at least try to make it readable and choose an appropriate font.
A lot of students think it’s a necessary evil; they use all of their time to create stunning graphics but think about typography way too late.
I’m not saying all students forget about typography! Depending on which courses they took, I suppose the students (or their teachers) pay more attention to it. You can find plenty of good resources on the internet that tackle typography for the web.
Besides students, there are a lot of people who pay no attention to (basic) typography - while good typography could certainly enhance readability, look and feel, …
Here’s a quick introduction movie (chances are that you’ve already seen this one):
So please, pay attention to it - it really matters.