Typographical hierarchy might not be something you’ve ever considered before if you don’t happen to be a graphic designer, but it’s essential for your business communications.
What is typographical hierarchy?
Typographical hierarchy is the use of typefaces, font weights and styles, type size and color to prioritize and emphasize elements of text so readers (and search engines) can scan and interpret your content more easily.
Why is it important?
Since communications in any medium usually include at least some text, typographical hierarchy is one of the most important arrows in the graphic designer’s quiver. Its chief purpose is to organize the content, prioritizing and emphasizing certain parts, making it easier for readers to parse information as they scan the page.
From an aesthetic standpoint, typographical hierarchy makes layouts more appealing to look at, and helps guide the viewer’s eye around page with different weights and styles of type and splashes of color.
The most obvious components of typographical hierarchy are headlines, subheads, and body copy. But there are also pull quotes, captions, bullet points, small print, testimonials, attributions, and more. All type elements should be assigned consistent styles for beautiful, cohesive and well-organized designs.
Typographical hierarchy is also an essential part of branding. When a designer creates a branding system, speccing the type is a key component. Consistent use of specific fonts & colors across all media helps to reinforce the visual brand, fostering brand recognition.
It’s essential for SEO
In recent years, typographical hierarchy has come to play a crucial in SEO. When creating CSS style sheets for websites, the web designer assigns fonts, sizes, colors and character styles (such as weight, all caps and letterspacing) for each level of headline, body copy, captions and pull quotes. The web designer styles each of these levels to be aesthetically pleasing, enforce the brand, and organize content, just as for print. However in web design, there is a deeper purpose. There are six levels of headline tags, ranging from the largest H1 to smallest H6. Google uses these tags to prioritize which content on the page is most relevant for search results. H1 identifies the page title and main keyword. H2 tags designate the most important supporting ideas. Proper use of these tags can help your site rank higher in search results.
In conclusion
Though you may never have thought about it before, typographical hierarchy is all around you. It works hard to organize information and ideas for you, while also making everything more beautiful! AVP can help you harness it to improve the way you reach and communicate with your audiences.
Typographical hierarchy is as old as written language itself. Examples can be seen in Egyptian hieroglyphs, cuneiform tablets, ancient Roman monuments – basically anywhere there was the written word. King Charlemagne first introduced type specifications to the West when he mandated the font “Carolingian minuscule” be used throughout the Holy Roman Empire around 800 CE. Typographical hierarchy became more widely used when Johannes Gutenberg developed the first moveable type printing press around 1440 CE, and numerous typefaces were developed with various sizes, weights and styles that could even be printed in different colors.
