Everything You Need to Know About Designing for Web Typography

Web typography is at once simple and complex. At its core, it’s about how you arrange text so they’re pleasing and easy to read—yet there’s an endless number of ways to achieve an optimal reading experience.

This is a practical guide to navigating the rabbit hole of web typography so that you can create optimal textual experiences on the web. It’s the kind of guide I wish I had when I started.

This is a long one. But this is the only article you need to get started—although you’re welcome to do a further reading because typography is just amazing.

The Holy Trinity of Web Typography

Let’s start with the basics. Web typography is made up of these three things:

1. Font size: what sizes will you use?
2. Line height: how much space between lines of text?
3. Line length: how wide will your blocks of text be?

Your end goal is a good reading experience, and the holy trinity of web typography directly determines how pleasing your texts will be. Let me explain.