por Typography is an essential part of graphic design, since it guides the opinion and emotions of users and is the first impact that they will have when encountering your brand. It is important to understand the characteristics of typography in order to make designs that mark and impact our audience. In this post, we talk to you about these characteristics of typography.
What is typography?
Before understanding the characteristics of a font, let’s see this concept as such.
The typography is the art and technique of organizing guys for a print job.
Types were born from metal type in the 15th century; They were letters on metal plates to which ink was applied and struck on a surface to leave an engraving. They used to have designs and different types of letters.
This gave way to the typography we know today, where we choose the sources and organize them depending on the identity we want to give to our project.
Font or typography
Before continuing with the characteristics of typography, it is important to emphasize the distinction between font and typography. Font is a set of typefaces under one name, while typography is a specific style of lettering within the font.
Typography characteristics
Before detailing the characteristics of typography, it must be said that it has two fundamental properties. The first is the reading ability you may have; It is very important that people can read without problems what we are trying to communicate. The second property is that The aesthetics of typography must be linked to our design proposal.
In order to comply with these properties, there are some typography characteristics to take into account. Types have typographic characteristics own, which are what really give the aesthetics to the letters. There are 3 basic categories of type: Serif, Sans Serif and Slab.
Serif
A serif is a small stroke adjacent to a larger stroke; are known as
feet and are found at the bottom of the letters. Not all serifs are the same, depending on the fonts each one will have unique typeface characteristics that go with their typeface families.
Serifs are classified as traditional formal font types.is most recognizable by Times New Roman and you could usually find it in printed books or newspapers.
Sans Serif
The characteristic of typography sans serif is its lack of serif, as its name indicates. These fonts They are more modern and “clean” and easier to read in both digital and print media. It is most recognizable by the Arial font, which is the default font for applications like Google Docs.
Slab
The fonts slab They are the ones in the middle of sans serif and serif. They are fonts that They do not have marked serifsbut they do have small decorations at the end of each letter.
Although these are the basic types and characteristics of typography, There are other types, such as fonts scriptwhich are those that appear to be written in calligraphy or Roman characters, and rounded or decorative fonts, which are normally used in very specific situations, as they can be very aggressive for reading.
Things you should keep in mind
Aside from the characteristics of the typography, in order to successfully choose a font that matches the identity of your company and conveys the message that you want your users to interpret, There are certain things you should keep in mind.
The length of your text It is one of the main things to keep in mind. People get tired very quickly, you have to make sure that the font you choose is the best for the length of text you need.
Your audience He is the one you should always keep in mind when choosing a font; It is not the same whether your audience is children or adults. Remember the needs of your clients.
What media are you going to use this font for? It is also a decisive factor, it is not the same to think about something digitally as it is physically. Finally, the general composition of the text and the design of the project you are carrying out are great determinants in the type of typography that will fit visually.
As a last piece of advice, To see how your typography looks in a design or in text, use Lorem Ipsumwhich allows you to organically see how your typography interacts with your designs.
Learn about design and digital marketing
If, after learning what the characteristics of typography are, you want to continue Going deeper into the topic, we invite you to sign up for our Digital Marketing and Data Analysis Bootcampwhere you will learn everything you need to become an expert in the field. Request information and sign up now!