Beginning Blogging Series: How NOT to Use Type

Andrew Martin Creative Director

Everyone has seen an ugly PowerPoint presentation, a tacky and difficult to read flyer, or a painfully bad Yellow Pages ad. Chances are you've seen all three of these examples in abundance. One of the classic methods of ruining a printed piece is through the use of bad typographic practices. Unfortunately, shortly after the internet revolutionized into a forum for the general public, these ill-advised practices began popping up on web pages world wide.

Bloggers and web content self-publishers. Please, please, I beg you - avoid these top three typographic taboos and do the entire seeing world a favor!

#1: Too many different fonts and colors

A college professor of mine once advised us never to exceed two typefaces for any design, with the exception of . I agree with him 100%. Generally a header font and a body text font suffice perfectly, and they don't even need to differ! Often times, a larger, and optionally bold, version of the same typeface can create the most unified look possible. Overdoing it with the color on type can ruin a color scheme and hinder legibility, so please tread lightly.