Typography can be beautiful and still fail at its most basic job. Letters are there to be read. This becomes surprisingly easy to forget once typography is being considered as an aesthetic object rather than as language.
The design environment is unusually forgiving
Designers generally work on good screens, at comfortable distances and while paying close attention to the thing they are designing. Real audiences frequently do none of those things.
- type size and weight
- line length and leading
- contrast between text and background
- text placed over photography
- hierarchy between headings and body copy
- how typography behaves at smaller screen sizes
Hierarchy helps people decide what to read
Legibility is not simply the ability to decipher individual words. Good typography helps the reader understand how information is organised. Headings separate subjects, weight and scale indicate importance, and spacing establishes relationships.
When everything demands equal attention, nothing really has priority.
Small text is not automatically sophisticated
There is a recurring temptation in premium design to make typography progressively smaller and lighter until it becomes extremely tasteful and rather difficult to read.
Restraint can be elegant. Invisibility is less useful.
If Fred has to zoom the page, move closer to the poster or hunt for the information, the typography may be serving the composition rather better than the communication.
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