4 Tips on Typography in Ad Design
Selecting the Font
With literally thousands of fonts to choose from, how do you know which one is best?
The answer is simple (but of course, never easy). Experiment. I never create an ad without sampling at least ten different font styles. Sampling fonts is as simple as highlighting the copy, scrolling though your fonts and choosing various options. This is an important step that should never be overlooked.
In this ad, I wanted a look that reflected the concept of art in the headline. I contrasted that with a more straight-forward font for the body copy.
Kerning
Along with the perfect font, kerning separates a good design from a bad one and, for that matter, a good designer from a poor one. Kerning is the manipulation of the space between each letter as well as space between lines of copy. This is also referred to as leading.
The headline in this ad hasn’t been kerned.
Here’s the same ad after kerning – looks much better and is easier to read, don’t you think? When you type in your headline or copy, the computer does not kern the type. To the eye of a good designer, the spaces between the letters have to be kerned.
The space between an “o” and an “e” is different from that of an “s” and “n.” The designer looks at the space between each letter and closes it up or opens it up one letter at a time.
