Understanding Fonts

Trying to find the right font? Before you choose Arial, Times New Roman, or even Papryus (please don’t) let’s explore the world of fonts and typography. It is a place of creativity, accessibility, and will have your campaign feeling very harmonious. Let’s dive in.

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Fonts & Typography

Fonts are a system of designed letters & characters, enabling you to express language with creativity & clarity. The system will include a base font with an extension of different weights (eg. bold), styles (eg. italic), and sizing (eg. condensed). Think of a common font – Arial – it was created in 1982 by two gentlemen for IBM, and later adopted by Microsoft. It has a range of weights and styles, and also an interesting back story (check out fonts.com). Fonts are fascinating!
Typography on the other hand, is the art of using type and fonts to enable readability, accessibility, and creativity. Understanding type hierarchy, space, and complements are all key elements within this art. You may be surprised, but it is often this art that separates the real designers from the rest.     


Finding the right font

Before you go ahead and pick your favourite, refer to your brand style guide if you have one, as you’ll find the font selections for you. Otherwise, here are some helpful tips in choosing the right font:
  • Accessibility comes before creativity. Before finding the curliest or grungiest font you can, consider your audience, and fonts that are clear and easily read.
  • Find complementary serif & san-serif fonts. Serif fonts have stylised ends (eg. Lora whilst san-serif fonts have clean straight edges. Using serif font for your Headings and san-serif for paragraph and sub-headings can have a great effect.
  • Start with Google Fonts (free) or Adobe fonts (paid subscription). For most use cases, you’ll find the perfect fit.
  • Create a test page, rather than testing one word. Have a HEADING, sub-Heading, and paragraph/body text and play with fonts. Seeing the font in a use-case is much more helpful than just looking at single words.
  • If in doubt, start with something simple like Lato (Google Font) or Neue Haas Grotesk (Adobe Font). These are quite generic fonts but are clean and offer a lot of flexibility. You are better off spending days working on your campaign than searching for the perfect font.  


Understanding hierarchy

Once you have your font ready, planning your hierarchy is the next step. Find a nice magazine or cookbook near you and open up a page. If you look carefully, you see there is a hierarchy in the font design. You’ll have a:

Primary Heading

Secondary Heading

SUB-HEADING

Large paragraph text

Paragraph/Body text

Small paragraph text

These are all designed to help the viewers eyes focus on what is important and what is expected. Typically, the flow moves from larger (Primary Heading) to smaller (paragraph text). Notice that the bigger the text is the less that can be said, whilst the smaller it is the more can be said. Here you can make decisions on what your viewers take in. 
In web design, your hierarchy is expressed in Headings & Paragraph styles. Typically, most websites will have 3-4 Heading styles (H1, 2, 3, 4) and 2-3 paragraph styles (p, small-p, large-p). Take a look at your favourite website and using just your eye or tools like Font Finder, see how the hierarchy has been developed. 


Setting Up Your Fonts

Setting up your fonts in Raisely is simple, thanks to our integrations with Google Fonts and Adobe Typekit. Follow the steps below:


Accessibility

There is no one kind of viewer to your site. Therefore, when it comes to accessibility there can be two guiding principles that enable accessibility. Firstly, understand the standards when it comes to font size, colour, and space. Material.io has partnered with Google to provide a helpful tool to understanding font scale. Check it out! A good idea is also to view your site through a browser window in a common resolution. This allows you to make sure your fonts are working for your viewers and not just you. You can use a tool like whatsismyviewport to set the resolution to 1366 x 768, a helpful size to base design upon.
Secondly, edit your content. Keeping your content minimal and to the point enables those experiencing your campaign an undistracting experience. This in turn can serve those with learning and reading difficulties. 

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