Many novice WordPress designers emphasize on how to make their website look visually appealing and highly functional. However, when it comes to typography, most of them think it to be nothing more than finding the plugins to gain access to a bunch of good fonts.
But, typography isn’t just about putting up some cool fonts on the site, and can make a huge impact on how visitors will respond to your site.
In case you’re running a WP powered site and think that merely using this platform can help you achieve success in the web world, then that’s a wrong notion. No doubt, WordPress is a brilliant CMS that can be used for website creation and maintenance. However, even your well-designed site can ultimately fail due to bad typography.
In this post we will talk about the
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importance of typography, its problem and tips to improve typography of website.
Significance of Typography
According to studies, good typography helps make it easy for readers to understand the text easily, and also avoid fatigue. Typography helps in creating a fine balance between both the visual as well as vocal elements of a design. In a nutshell, it helps users understand the difference between what the type looks like and what it actually says.
The Problem That Persists
Today a lot of content-heavy sites are being developed. And so, managing the look and feel of the text (or type) in such sites becomes quite challenging for the designers. One possible reason behind this could be availability of specific typographic controls in web browsers and technologies. Moreover, WordPress lacks the essential controls that can help improve the look and feel of the type – that can be accomplished with applications such as Adobe Illustrator and others.
WordPress designers can add colors to the text, add fonts (that aren’t a part of the website theme), but it’s going to take time when we can actually find and start making use of the typography elements – present in our WordPress dashboards.
Tips on Improving Typography in Your WordPress Website Design
As discussed previously, it will take time for WordPress designers to actually turn into professional typographers (that is become able to put text onto WP page or post, for setting up type).
However, considering a few tips might prove helpful in improving typography of your web design:
1. Simplicity is the Key
This is the most obvious one. Stuffing your design with too many typefaces would only make it look cluttered and difficult read for the target audience. And so, you should abide by the standard rule of using only two typefaces: one for the page headings and second one for the body text. Usually, Sans Serif is used for the headings and the typeface “Serif font” is used for the body text (or main text). Make sure to stick to using two typefaces only until you’re an expert typographer.
2. Use the Right Color and Contrast
Writing text with bright colors often put strain on the readers eyes and can even cause fatigue. Besides this, using dull colors make the text look bland and difficult to read. And so, make sure to use the right color scheme for writing the text.
3. Use the Right Resources
There are a lot of resources available online that will surely make your WordPress sites look visually pleasing, without putting in too much efforts. Here’s a list of incredibly useful resources that you can consider to enhance your WP site design:
Kerning.js: If you’re a web designer and feel lack of control over typography, then you can use Kerning.js, which is just like adding a simple script in your web page as follows:
<script src=”kerning.js”></script>
Kerning.js comes loaded with several features including size adjustment, transformations, colors etc. What’s more? You can even apply Kerning.js styles to your page dynamically – when a new element is embedded into your page. This can be accomplished with help of following line of code:
<script>$(function() { Kerning.live(); });</script>
WP Code Highlight: This plugin provides clean syntax highlighting of code snippets. Besides, it comes with a code button making it easy for users to insert code into their articles without a fuss.
Simple Drop Cap: Simple Drop Cap is an incredible plugin that allows users to automatically turn the first letter of an article (or post) into a “drop cap” or “initial letter”. Additionally, it wraps the paragraph type around larger text.
Let’s Wrap Up!
If you’re a WordPress designer and seeking to have control over your website typography, then chances are that you’ll begin looking out for the best WordPress plugins to get the job done. However, there is lot more you need to focus on for improving your design typography rather than just using the right WP plugins. Reading this post will help you understand the significance of typography, problem that WordPress designers can face while enhancing typography and some great tips on coming up with a web design with good typography.
Article by Edward Jones – who is a web developer by profession and a writer by hobby and works for OSSMedia Ltd. a WordPress development company. He loves sharing information regarding wordpress, Magento, Drupal and Joomla development tips & tricks. If you are looking for WordPress Programmers then just get in touch with him.
(shameless plug)
If you would like to experiment with different font combinations, I suggest you to check Ultimate Google web fonts, a premium WordPress plugin which can make a live font preview with any theme. It lists all Google web fonts automatically and have a great visual tool to point and click the page element which you want to change. No css code editing required:
http://goo.gl/tk4bf
The plugin is great – thanks for the share.