Typography Does the Heavy Lifting

Strip the colour, the imagery and the effects from a good layout and it still works. Strip the typography and there was never a layout to begin with.

Type is the only element on the page that is always there. Everything else is optional, and it shows: a page with weak typography cannot be rescued by anything placed on top of it.

Where we spend the time

• The scale, before anything else. Two sizes too close together do more damage than a wrong colour.
• Measure over size. Line length decides whether a paragraph gets read.
• One typeface, well understood, before two that are merely different.

It is the least visible work in a project and the first thing a reader feels.