If there is one thing that improved my design skills, it's paying attention to typography.
Typography is the art and technique of arranging type to make written language legible, readable and appealing when displayed. -
Wikipedia
Typography is everywhere. Even when you don't notice it. Anywhere you use text you are playing by rules of typography.
And more often than not: you're breaking them.
I talked about this a lot in my post "Witches, we gotta talk about your obsession with centered text." (Admittedly, I wrote that when I was very annoyed and it reads like it. This email is a bit gentler.)
This is coming up again because I was clearing out old files in my Google Drive and came across my vast library of old workshops I'd hosted inside The Fiery Well membership between 2020 & 2022. While these are no longer part of the membership since restructuring it, they are too good to get rid of. Into the repurpose pile they go!
I happened to share a few gems from the Typography workshop about alignment on Threads and ... it resonated (I had to mute my notifications, ha!)
So I had to share and expand upon them here:
Aligning text:
If it's simple, it's centered.
A few words or maybe a sentence? Generally safe to center it.
If it's long, it's left.
A full paragraph? Multiple paragraphs? Align it left for easy reading and legibility.
If it's hyphenated, it’s justified. And honestly, leave justified text to print... newspapers, magazines, etc. And please stop using justified layouts in your Instagram images.
If it’s price, it’s right.
Align those numbers to the right, as well as any data that is tabulated, or uses a decimal.
These, and a few other tips are available in the PDF cheatsheet linked below:
TheFieryWell-TypographyCheatSheet.pdf (258 KB)
But honestly, if you want to improve the legibility of your website, sales pages, emails, and anywhere you use text... start by aligning that text to the left.
Oh, and make it bigger. Please. You cannot make it too big.
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Patty Ryan Lee
CEO | The Fiery Well, LLC
Join me inside our Free Discord this September! The Coworking Coven re-launches this Fall!
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P.S. - Wanting to improve your design with typography basics? Check out this course from Rafal Tomal.
Or if are you wanting to really improve your web design skill overall, check out the Learn UI course from Erik Kennedy.
I've taken both and highly recommend them. (I'm never not learning from other designers!)
