Size, Font, and Color

In this blog post, I’m going to talk about how Written With Design uses different sizes, fonts, and colors to make its' clients' copy stand out. 

The first thing to remember when using different sizes, fonts, etc is that it's like icing on a cake. You want it to complement your writing, not overpower it. Anyone can tell you that too much icing on a cake doesn't taste good (unless you're like me and enjoy eating icing all by itself).

However, before you start playing around with how your copy looks, make sure it sounds good. It's a lot easier to do all your editing before adding any special fonts, bold type, etc. Once you've made sure your copy is the way you want it, you can start adding the extras.

Adjusting the size

When you're thinking about adjusting the size of your copy you need to remember that it all has to be the same size. Copy that contains a bunch of different-sized words is hard to read, messy, and all-around ineffective. The only exception to this rule would be your headlines of course, and any quotes or phrases that you might want to make stand out by either making them larger or smaller.

You still need to be careful though, because you don't want the print to be too small, or so big that it's obnoxious. Generally, I move it up one or two sizes if I'm making the text larger and only one size if I'm making it smaller. You can also add italics or bold the words to make them stand out even more.

Advertisements on the other hand are a bit more forgiving when it comes to letter size. I'm sure you've seen advertisements that have very large lettering and then two or three other lines below that are all different sizes.

I wouldn't suggest doing this in an email though. When I write emails for Written With Design clients I use normal-sized lettering (size 11 in Google docs) and I don't even add headlines since most of the emails are only 150 words long or shorter.

Picking your font

When riding long sections of text, or even just a paragraph or two, I would suggest going with Ariel font. It's widely available, everybody has access to it, and it's the font that people are most accustomed to seeing when they open a web page. The font/typeface that you use doesn't actually matter that much as long as it's used consistently and is easy to read. 

I know that some of the fancier fonts look very appealing, but don't be fooled by appearances. Flowery, flowing letters are harder to read, and you're already going to be fighting to gain a potential customer's attention. If you want to use them for a short quote, catchphrase, etc that's fine. In fact, If you're planning on making a flyer to promote an event, adding a little decorative font to your headlines can be a great way to grab people's attention.

Adding some color

Depending on what you're writing and how long it is it may be a good idea to change the color on a few of the words. 

Sometimes this happens automatically. For example, if you've read through some of my other blog posts you'll see some words are a golden color. That's because those words have links attached to them, so the template I used to create my website automatically highlights them.

The same thing happens in emails. With most of the emails I write, I have two or three link placement spots and those words end up turning blue (blue is the standard color for links).

I want to issue a bit of a warning here. While it's true, you can change the color of the main text on your website to a more colorful option instead of black, don't do it. Black lettering on a white background is the easiest combination to read, and whatever you do, remember this…

Do not use a black background and white lettering.

Some websites try to be unique and use a dark background with white lettering. This doesn't make your website unique, it just makes it harder to read. As somebody who struggles with eye fatigue while staring at her computer, I can tell you for a fact that it's a lot more stressful for your eyes to have to read light-colored lettering on a dark background as opposed to dark-colored lettering on a light background. Stick with the white background and black lettering for your main text and add a little bit of color with your links and headings.

I hope that information helps. Of course, if you still end up needing some more advice on how to make your web pages, emails, etc stand out please feel free to contact me.