When you work with your web designer or graphic designer do you often get confused with the terms they use? We totally understand. Typography is full of technical terms which can make the average business owner feel a bit out of their depth. Essentially though, when you cut through the technicalities it’s all about improving the appearance and readability of your website, marketing material and branding collateral such as your logo.
Here’s 50 typography terms (you can find Part 1 – A to C here, Part 2 – D to H here and Part 3 – I to S here) that you might come across in designing your brand and/or website and what these terms actually mean. We even put them in alphabetical order in case there was something specific that was confusing you – you can quickly and easily find it.
Terminal – this is the end of any stroke without a serif and can be a tapered or ball shape.
Text Font – this refers to a category of fonts which a designed to work best at smaller sizes. They often are a great choice for the body copy of your website.
Tracking – this means to uniformly change the spacing between letters of a font. When you need your text to fill a particular space (perhaps for a CTA button) then an increase in the tracking might allow the text to fit the space and look great too.
Typographic Colour – this is the relative darkness or lightness of blocks of text on a page when you squint. Ensure that there is a sufficient difference between the typographic colours of your website’s body copy and your headings.
Typographic Contrast – this is the perceived difference in appearance between different fonts. It is specific to context but can include family, mood, weight and size. Correct contrast makes text on websites easier to read.
Vertex – this is the point where two strokes meet at the bottom of a glyph – such as in v and w.
Weight – this refers to the relative thickness of the font. A light font weight is often referred to a thin or light. A heavy font is often referred to as black, heavy or bold. Selecting the right font weight is crucial to ensuring your website copy is easy to read.
X-height – this is the height of the letter x in a font. It provides a way to describe how short or tall a font is.
For more help with typography and your website, just contact the team at Website Design Centre.
