Ninety percent of web design is typography — and most of it is restraint. These seven rules run underneath everything I ship, from landing pages to banking apps.
Scale, measure, contrast
One: a modular scale, so sizes relate instead of competing. Two: line length between 45 and 75 characters, always. Three: body text at a contrast ratio your grandmother could read — light gray on white is a rumor of content, not content.
Hierarchy and honesty
Four: three levels of hierarchy maximum per view; if everything is important, nothing is. Five: left-align body copy — centered paragraphs force every line to be re-found. Six: never set body text below 16 pixels on the web, and never letterspace lowercase.
Typography is the voice of the interface. When it’s calm and clear, users assume everything behind it is too.
Seven: two families, at most
One for voice, one for work — usually a distinctive display face and a hardworking text face. Every additional family halves the personality of the ones you have.
Rules are made to be broken by people who know them cold. Until then, these seven will carry you further than any trend.
