If you followed my old blog or happen to know me personally, you’ll be aware of the fact that I am an utter design enthusiast. I pride myself in creating nice looking graphics and am currently on a mission to find the graphic theme that best fits the personality of this blog (and so the graphics around here might not match each other for a while).

In order to create a fresh design, the use of text is almost always necessary. But, how is it used correctly? After all, if you don’t have your use of text right, it can put someone straight off of reading your advertisement, blog, leaflet ect. If used correctly, text is your greatest weapon.

Letter Spacing

Creating a visual hierarchy is vital and doing so can be easily done by specifying a different size, weight (and maybe even font) for your heading, sub-headings and body copy. It is the best way to differentiate your content and is also very aesthetically pleasing.

Your heading should be the boldest element. Using a heavy typeface and adjusting the letter spacing is a great way to determine that it is. The font used for the heading above is “Raleway Heavy”. A finer typeface should be used for your body copy. The one selected here is “Roboto Condensed”.

Variety in Alignment

Varying the alignment of text elements keep the design interesting. Often, text is aligned left to right as this is the direction in which most of us read. However, people often change designs up by having their headings aligned to the right and a common technique is to have the heading element center aligned.

Content Conscious

It is important that your design is consistent and this can be ensured by choosing typefaces which are aesthetically aligned to your content. That is, your typefaces should represent both your content and your other design elements.

A great technique is to add an element in the space that is between the words.

Substitute Text With Images

They do say that a picture is worth a thousand words and, whilst it is true that text can be essential in a design, it’s also important to have a balance between image and text.

For example, in the image above, the “FOLLOW ME” text has been created as a subtle element, with an interesting font and set at a low opacity, where the WordPress symbol is full opacity, center of the design, bringing attention to itself. It also reads “follow me” on WordPress, with the URL highlighted in white below.

What are your favourite fonts? Have you any effective font tips? Share them below in the comment section, or just say hi!