How to get web typography right
It is rarely the thing that gets a project approved, and often the thing that decides how it goes. The short answer to web typography is that it is mostly a sequence of small decisions, not one big one.
Consistency is the quiet half of design work: it rarely gets complimented, and its absence is noticed immediately. If it only works because one person remembers to do something, it does not work yet.
Why this earns attention
Body text below 16px is a readability problem, not a style choice. None of that requires a large budget, only a decision and someone to own it. Write the reasoning down alongside the decision, because the reasoning is what changes first.
The steps
- Establish what you have today before changing anything
- Line length between 50 and 75 characters is easiest to read
- Two typefaces is plenty for almost any site
- Write down the decision so the next person does not re-litigate it
Two typefaces is plenty for almost any site. Small and consistent beats large and occasional here. The version that survives contact with a real deadline is the simple one.
Turning this into a decision
How to tell if yours is fine
Design decisions are the ones clients feel most confident arguing about, which makes it worth separating taste from evidence early. Three things worth confirming about web typography before you move on:
- Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
- Two typefaces is plenty for almost any site — and you know whether that is true here
- There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped
If you want a second opinion on how yours is set up, ask.