Web Design: The Most Important Usability Change You Haven’t Made Yet

By Daniel Miessler on September 17th, 2007: Tagged as Blogging | Design | Typography | Writing

p style=”text-align: center”> typography 15all.files

I have a new design philosophy. It’s called 100% Easy to Read. Here are the highlights:

Don’t tell us to adjust the font size
Don’t tell us busy pages look better
Don’t tell us scrolling is bad
Don’t tell us text isn’t important (95% of “web design” is typography)
Don’t tell us to get glasses (use a font-size that’s large enough)

Here are the 5 basic rules:

Standard font size for long texts
Active white space
Reader-friendly line height
Clear color contrast
No text in images

There are two other concepts that jumped out at me: using text as an interface, and the understanding that typography is not the art of selecting typefaces. Typography is so much more.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the presentation of my text lately. Until now it’s been about the formatting of the text within the post itself, but now I’m thinking more about the look of the entire page and site.

I’m going to be doing a lot with this in coming weeks and months. I at least have an idea of what I want; now I just need to get there. I thank the heavens for CSS.:

Comments

TyCat

I really havent thought to much about how its read..as long as its read is my main focus.

Daniel Miessler

But making it easy and pleasant to read is what's most likely to get it read. :)

Marcin

Is it me, or is Verdana 10px font the most popular, easiest to read font?

Daniel Miessler

I think 10 may be a bit small, but I am not sure. I think 12 is more along the lines of where we're supposed to be. I'm going to have to research it.

According to what I'm reading the default that most browsers choose is ideal. Much to learn...