Typography in UI Design: Points to consider while designing

Typography is the art of arranging text to make it readable, visually appealing, and expressive. Apart from using right fonts, it explains how text looks, feels, and guides the reader’s experience. The right typography makes content easy to read, sets the mood, and even influences how people perceive a brand or product.

Typography plays a key role in UI and visual design because it directly affects readability, usability, and the overall feel of a product. Well-chosen fonts create hierarchy, guide users through content effortlessly, and make interfaces intuitive. Good typography enhances accessibility, ensuring text is easy to read for everyone, while also reinforcing a brand’s personality.

Here’s how conscious choices in typography can elevate both aesthetics and usability.

1. Vibe Check!

Before choosing a typeface (the overall design of a set of characters, including letters, numbers, and symbols, that share a consistent style), consider the product’s personality. Fonts (a specific variation of a typeface, including details like weight (bold, light), style (italic, regular), and size) shape perception, usability, and brand identity.

• Serif → Serif typeface evoke a sense of tradition, trust, and sophistication. Their small decorative strokes give them a classic, authoritative feel, making them ideal for conveying credibility and elegance. Great for editorial platforms, finance, luxury brands. (e.g., Times New Roman, Garamond)
• Sans-Serif → Sans-serif typeface feel clean, minimal, and highly readable. With their simple, stroke-free design, they create a contemporary, approachable, and user-friendly vibe. Perfect for tech, startups, apps, minimalist branding. (e.g., Helvetica, Roboto, Inter)
• Script → They give a sense of elegance, and artistry. Their flowing, handwritten style adds warmth and expressiveness, making them ideal for designs that aim to feel personal, stylish, or decorative. Best for branding, invitations, creative industries (e.g., Pacifico, Lobster)
• Monospace → They create a structured, precise, and technical feel. They evoke a sense of clarity and functionality, making them ideal for displaying code, system text, or data-driven content. Works for developer tools, coding interfaces, tech-heavy branding. (e.g., Courier, Space Mono)

2. Readability & Accessibility

• Legibility → Can you tell letters apart? similar characters like "l" and "1" or "o" and "0" can create confusion among readers which can lead to them creating mistakes which can cost users a lot of their time and resources. Choosing fonts with high legibility is essential in interfaces where quick reading is required, such as dashboards, forms, and navigation menus.
• Readibiliity → Does it feel comfortable to read? Proper font size, line height, and spacing help ensure that users don’t struggle with text-heavy content. Lines that are too close together or too long can make reading exhausting, while overly decorative or condensed fonts slow down reading speed and comprehension. Breaking up text into digestible sections, using clear hierarchy, and aligning text properly all contribute to a better reading experience.
• Inclusivity → Dyslexia-friendly fonts, increased letter spacing, and high contrast improve accessibility for users with visual impairments or reading disorders. Adjusting letter and word spacing prevents text from feeling too dense, while using softer contrast (like dark gray text on an off-white background) reduces glare and eye strain.

3. Font Size & Hierarchy

• Size & Weight
  → Larger and heavier fonts naturally stand out, making them perfect for headlines, calls to action, or key information that needs emphasis. On the other hand, body text should be lighter and appropriately sized to maintain readability over long passages, ensuring users don’t feel overwhelmed or fatigued while reading.
• Hierarchy for Scannability → Users don’t read everything, they scan for relevant information, and a clear heading structure makes this process faster and more intuitive. A well-structured hierarchy visually organizes content, allowing users to quickly understand the main points before diving into details.
• Proximity Principle → When related elements are placed close together, users instinctively understand that they belong to the same category or topic, reducing cognitive load. Proper spacing between unrelated sections helps avoid visual clutter, making the layout feel cleaner and more organized.

4. Contrast & Color

• Keep it Simple → High contrast between text and background makes reading effortless, especially for users with visual impairments or color blindness. However, using pure black text on a pure white background creates excessive strain due to the stark contrast, so softer shades like dark gray on off-white improve comfort without sacrificing readability.
• UI Color Cues
• Red Red is associated with urgency and danger, making it the go-to color for error messages, alerts, or anything that requires immediate attention. It naturally grabs the eye, helping users quickly recognize mistakes in forms, payment failures, or system warnings.
• Yellow Yellow signals caution or important, non-critical alerts, often used in warnings that don’t require urgent action. It also works well for drawing subtle attention to tooltips, notifications, or key UI elements without overwhelming the user.
• Blue Blue is commonly used in corporate, financial, and tech interfaces because it conveys reliability, calmness, and security. It’s often the default color for hyperlinks and UI elements that require user interaction, reinforcing familiarity and dependability.
• Green Green is associated with positive outcomes, such as successful transactions, completed actions, or system confirmations. It’s also linked to eco-friendly initiatives, health-related content, and UI elements that encourage progress or approval.

5. Break the Rules (Once in a While)

Typography comes with best practices, but sometimes the most memorable designs emerge when those rules are intentionally bent. Experimenting with oversized fonts, unconventional layouts, or bold contrasts can inject personality and emotion into a design, making it stand out. This approach works especially well in branding, editorial design, and creative campaigns where uniqueness matters.

A great example is Spotify Wrapped, which uses a mix of loud, distorted typography, unexpected angles, and vibrant colors to create an energetic and playful visual language. Despite breaking traditional readability rules, it resonates with users because it aligns with the fun, dynamic nature of the content. The key is to break conventions with purpose—pushing creative boundaries while still ensuring usability. When done right, experimental typography transforms a product from just functional to something users genuinely love interacting with.