Best Practices for Typography in UX Design
Typography is crucial in how users value a digital product. If you consider that at least 90 percent of online information is in text form, it’s obvious how typography is critical in UX design. This article shares practical principles that can help UX designers become more proficient in using typography to repeatedly draw users to products.
What is Typography?
In design, the use of typefaces and how they’re organized to create readable, usable and user-friendly user interfaces (UIs) is known as typography. Effective typography positively impacts UX, optimizes usability, invites users to the product, and may increase conversion rates.
Typography Best Practices
The following typography guidelines can help you to achieve optimal user-friendliness in your digital product.
Only use few typefaces at a time
Only use two or three typefaces in design. This helps you keep the size and loading time of your digital products small. It’s preferable to use fonts that are likely installed on the user’s device.
Your typefaces should compliment and contrast one another
Play to the strengths of each typeface. Using not-too-similar typefaces can create contrast, such as one serif and one sans serif typeface.
Aim for readability, legibility, and accessibility
Your text must be understandable so that it communicates information via text. The user, their environment, and the medium with which they engage your product should determine your decision on typefaces.
It’s best to test always your designs with real users.
Use type visual hierarchy to enhance UX
Type hierarchy helps users to quickly scan information. Organize content by ascribing prominence based on priority. Other effective ways of creating visual hierarchy are using color, size, and weight. Effective hierarchy also improves SEO.
Use scalable typography
It’s now natural to create digital products that work on different screen sizes. The user experience on either device should exactly be the same. So, define a scale for your font and typeface at the onset of the design process. Your scale guidelines must accommodate different operating systems and platforms.
Enrich user experience with typography
The overall visual language for communicating with your user includes typography. Typography can set a mood or tone, and present a product based on user perception and user expectations.
Always be testing and learning
Every stage of UX design needs testing and provides opportunities to learn from past choices. Trying different typefaces and fonts to see how they work alone and in tandem with others, and scaling from one platform to another helps to make the final experience seamless for all users.
Conclusion
Typography is fundamental to a positive user experience. Observing the simplicity principle is an excellent way to accelerate the user flow by keeping things readable, accessible, and understandable. Check out the UILand library to see our collection of neat product typography embodying these best practices.
