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Digital Typography Guide For Magazine Publishers

Paulina Kubala-Chuchnowska
presspad tips related to typography

Digital typography is a natural phase in the development of writing that has been going on for centuries. Even if at the beginning the technique of arranging type was something that had a pure utility function, it became a part of visual art over time. Choosing the right fonts, the size of the letters, and the space between them are the challenges that every creator of texts, magazines, or websites must face. All of this is to provide people with the pleasure of reading at the highest possible level while maintaining the principles of usability, convenience, and uniqueness of the content. This article has been written to help you achieve these goals.

In the beginning there was the word. Or a letter, in fact. Or actually, it was the typeface. Johannes Gutenberg – does that ring a bell for you? The moment he invented the mechanical movable-type printing press is considered by Europeans to be the beginning of the printing era.

That was the time when it all started.

There was a boom in printing along with creating new characters, designing typefaces, and layouts. Over the years, typography has entered every aspect of our lives, and now (although you probably don’t pay attention to it) it’s absolutely everywhere and surrounds us from every angle of daily life. Don’t believe it?

Look at your books and their spines with the titles; open your kitchen cupboard and peek at the product names on their boxes; dig at the name of your fridge inscribed on its door; enter the shopping center and focus on the names put at the shops’ entrances. Do you already know what I’m talking about?

Today, apart from the traditional typography used in print, its digital counterpart has an equally important place in designing and preparing publications.

Whether you are a publisher, designer, creator of a magazine or a website, or just a font fan, go deeper into this digital typography guide to be able to prepare a stunning online publication.

Table of contents:

How to improve digital typography?

The history of typography development is absolutely remarkable, interesting, and full of watersheds. One of them was the transition from a metal typesetting to a digital and photographic one. For many publishers, it was a considerable change or even a breakthrough for Gutenberg’s measure. Today, we can all be a little moved watching the video that shows The Last Day of Hot Metal Typesetting at the New York Times (1978).

Let’s take a leap in time to observe what we are all dealing with today – digital typography.

Typography – the basics

Typography is the technique of arranging type to make written language legible, readable, and also appealing to the reader. This concept includes a number of different activities such as: selecting typefaces, point sizes, line lengths, line-spacing, letter-spacing, and adjusting the space between pairs of letters.

There’s a nuanced but significant difference between two similar terms: “typeface” and “font”. According to CourseLounge “a typeface describes a consistent design or style within a collection or family of types where the variations within each family are known as fonts”.

Typefaces are grouped into dozens of categories. You’ve probably heard about the division into serif and sans serif fonts. But this is just the beginning. Typefaces have their families; usually, five basic classifications are distinguished (although you can find more categories on the Internet, or they can be slightly differently named).

Typeface Classification

Within the above groups, we can distinguish certain subgroups. There are specific names of fonts in them. This is how it works:

How to choose the right font for your digital publication?

There’s no perfect answer to this question. The main rule is legibility and aesthetic consistency. The art of design is to adjust the font to the size of the screen on which the publication will be read. Regardless of whether you publish a web magazine displayed on computer screens or a mobile magazine app seen on smartphones, the font should allow reading the text with ease, and provide comfort to the eyes without strain.

Before choosing fonts, study your audience closely: their age and jobs. The fonts should fit readers’ expectations and their lifestyles. Sounds weird? But look – Comic Sans might be perfect for kids or comics fans but not lawyers or academic teachers.

The main rules that should be followed when you choose fonts:

Fonts and the way they affect people is also the subject of many scientific studies. For example, they can convey trustworthiness. Readers are more likely to believe the information set in a serif font such as Baskerville than a sans serif font such as Helvetica.

Another analysis shows that serif fonts are seen as more traditional, sans serif fonts more casual, and fixed-width fonts are plain and boring. It was confirmed by researchers saying that font size, stroke thickness, and character spacing can evoke memories and mental images in onlookers. For example, larger font sizes produce a stronger emotional response.

Fonts you can safely use in your digital publications:

Fonts that we advise you to avoid (or at least use sparingly):

How many fonts do you need and how to mix them?

You don’t have to limit yourself to one font, but remember that five is simply too much and this amount will make a text just chaotic instead of pretty. At the beginning, you can play with two, with the principle that you choose one for the main body and the other for the title (or subtitles). Typefaces from the same period are more likely to work well together and if they were created by the same designer, the better for the consistency of the design.

You can mix sans serif and serif fonts, looking for the perfect pairing of them by trial and error. This combination can help you create a nice texture on the content page and set apart different sections of the article. A sans serif and serif mixed between the headings and text usually turn out quite attractive.

Look at “Eating Naturally Magazine”. They mix different font types together on their cover keeping sans serif for the title. The whole thing catches the eye and gives an effect of professional, refined design.

Eating Naturally Magazine on iPad

Sans serif fonts:

Serif fonts:

What font size should you choose?

Properly selected font size improves digital publication readability and allows people to avoid frustration while consuming content on a mobile device.

Too small a text may cause tiredness. As a result, the readers ignore most of the written information. This is especially important for reading on mobile phones where lowercase letters on a small bright screen can cause headaches. On the other hand, too large a text can also cause problems. It’ll be distracting and draw attention to itself too much and not the essence of the words.

Note that different fonts of the same size can look totally different and give various aesthetic impressions. One font in 12 point size can seem much higher than another in the same size. Despite all the rules, everything should be checked in an individual way before the final publishing.

In different guides, the font sizes are defined in a diverse way. Pixels (px) are not the same as points (pt). You’ll find the appropriate converter here.

Where can you get fonts?

The answer is simple – from the Internet! Oh, God, what would we do without it?! There’s a lot of websites offering free or paid fonts you can just download in various formats (otf., ttf.). Most of them are provided with a font search engine based on different categories like size, popularity, time of origin, etc.

Here’s the list of places that will help you in choosing fonts:

– How can I find the names of fonts I saw somewhere?

There are websites that help with recognizing the font. You only need to upload a picture (screenshot) of a font you like and that’s it. One of those kinds of websites is myfonts.com, try it yourself.

How to use fonts in a PDF file?

You will download fonts (for example from websites listed above) to your computer, not a specific program. They often come in two formats: otf. or ttf. If you need to change the format, you can easily convert one to another – there are tons of programs on the Internet to do it quickly.

After downloading a new font from the website, you have to install it, which is super easy. To install a new font on a Mac, find a downloaded font file, double click the font name to open it in a viewer, then click the install button.

To install a new font on Windows 10, right-click the font file, and then click “install”.

After you’ve installed the new font on your computer, they’ll appear naturally in different programs you have and will be ready to use.

If you use InDesign, the font you installed will then appear in the Font menu on the Character panel.

Remember to embed fonts into your PDF in InDesign.

Embedding fonts is a way to ensure your document is viewed as intended, with no unwanted font changes.

How to embed fonts in InDesign?

  1. Open your file in InDesign.
  2. Go to File > Export.
  3. You’ll see the Export dialog window. Create a file name for your PDF document and select the Format dropdown menu and then select Adobe PDF (Print). Ensure your document is the PDF type, and Save the file.
  4. You will see the Export Adobe PDF dialog window with a lot of settings, but we are interested only in these related to font embedding. Select Advanced from the left menu.
  5. You will have access to the Font settings. The settings related to font embedding only have a single value. To ensure that all the fonts in the document are embedded, set it to 0%.
  6. Then select Export.
  7. All of your fonts are embedded into the document.

If you have some PDF file on your computer, you can check what fonts have been used in it:

  1. Open your PDF file.
  2. Click File> Document Properties.
  3. Click on the Fonts Tab to display the list of all fonts.

Digital typography connects people

Typography isn’t only just an element of digital magazine design. It’s totally something bigger – a part of communication on the line: publisher-content-reader. Ben Barrett-Forrest, a graphic designer and the author of a video about the history of typography, says: “Type is a power. The power to express words and ideas visually. It’s timeless, but always changing.”

Properly selected fonts and a well-arranged layout have an impact on the first impression of the magazine, the comfort of reading, and the overall perception of the brand. The better it all fits together, the more professional it seems to the reader.

We hope our advice will help you improve your digital typography regardless of the project you work on.

Glossary – a few terms related to typography worth knowing:

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