Typography Tutorial - 10 rules to help you rule type

Graphic Design Tutorial: 10 Typography rules to help you improve your type skills. Get better at graphic design by understanding how to use type. Improve your layouts instantly by following these 10 easy to follow rules.

How can you quickly apply typographic rules to regain control of your layouts by following these 10 golden rules of typography? These rules are distilled down from the things that I learned by going to Art Center College of Design.

Generally speaking, there are two types of typography– expressive typography (type is visual, carries the meaning of the word and sometimes appears as physical shapes) and functional typography (type that is meant to be read). I will focus on the latter.

When starting out, it is best to learn the fundamentals of good design: hierarchy (primary, secondary and tierchiary reads), flow (how a person “reads” the layout by following the movement of their attention), legibility (in Western culture, type is read top to bottom, left to right so it’s important to arrange type accordingly), grouping (organizing blocks of type in intelligent and logical groups) and interest, achieved through contrast (scale, texture, color, density, negative space).

Use any typeface you like as long as it’s one of the following: Akzidenz Grotesque, Avenir, Avant Garde, Bell Gothic, Bodoni, Bembo, Caslon, Clarendon, Courier, Din Mittelschrift, Franklin Gothic, Frutiger, Futura, Garamond, Gill Sans, Gotham, Helvetica, Letter Gothic, Memphis, Meta, OCRB, Rockwell, Sabon, Trade Gothic, Trajan and Univers.
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Great books to learn more about typography:

Stop Stealing Sheep & Find Out How Type Works
by Erik Spiekermann

Josef Müller Brockmann
Pioneer of Swiss Graphic Design

Typography Manual
@2017 Chris Do

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Animation by:
Leo Dinh
Red Cat Motion

Music and sound design by:
Adam Sanborne

English closed captions provided by:
Mindy Fulcher
Director of Digital Innovations
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[amporu]

Final Rule: Abandon all rules as insisted by your client. #clientfromhell

[JordyC]

One rule to remember when using text in motion graphics is: allow the reader to read the text on screen 1.5 times. This ensures they can read it all at least once.

[rootx]

Here's the font list, you're welcome:

Akzidenz Grotesque,
Avenir, Avant
Garde,
Bell Gothic
Bodoni
Bembo,
Caslon,
Clarendon,
Courier,
Din Mittelschrift,
Franklin Gothic,
Frutiger,
Futura,
Garamond,
Gill Sans,
Gotham.,
Helvetica,
Letter Gothic,
Memphis,
Meta.
OCRB,
Rockwell.
Sabon,
Trade Gothic,
Trajan,
Univers.

[polobreak]

1. Justify left
2. Use one font
3. Skip a weight for different fonts (use light/bold not reg/bold)
4. Double point size for different fonts
5. Align to one axis. Vertical: align to left. Horizontal: align to strongest horizontal element (Cap/baseline).
6. Pick any font listed
7. Group by using rules
8. Avoid putting fonts on edge/corners of page unless it deliberately cuts off the font
9. Don’t use forced full justify & avoid having a single last word sticking out at the bottom of a paragraph. Don’t separate words from a paragraph.
10. Be bold or italic never regular

[tanmaykhelkar]

The only colours used are Black and White, still looks amazing 'cause
*Typography matters*

[thefutur]

Did seeing this in motion help to explain this better than just reading it on a page?

[JimFonsecaDesign]

WOW! This short video just made my simple flier design so much better! Almost 6 years later and this still holds up. Thanks!

[jonathanvornbrock]

Do more videos like this please! Simple, straight to the point and easy to follow.

[krutipathak]

Can we just take a moment and appreciate the motion graphics and sound effects? briliantly done.

[andywira]

This is gold. Information. Animation. Audio.

[ShirleiBarnes]

I watch this over and over. Each time, it reminds me of a rule to work on. One step at the time. So grateful to have this tool for free. Thank you 😊

[AppleWatchCenter]

It helped being a short video and straight to the point, well done

[NicoleGraphix]

Not only has this been eye-opening, but beautifully directed. The animations were awesome!

[yashwinning]

The animation on this was fucking insane! Great work on that. Recently started checking out videos on typography and the likes and your channel is definitely one of the best out there.

However the texts were a bit too fast. You should either slow them down or do a voice over. While I enjoyed this video, in my opinion a voice over + some sick ass animation would be better. Kinda like Vox's videos(their typography makes me drool).

[MiScusi]

I am in absolute love with:
Main title in Baskerville
Text and secondary titles in Bodoni

[SuperManny]

This has to be the most spot on typography explanation ive seen. to be honest the animation made the me understand why what you said DOES make a difference in the design. p.s. ive heard about you only 2 months ago and Im eating up your content like there's no tomorrow. Thank you for sharing so much experience with us

[debbiekennedy]

I like the short tutorials packed with spot on information. Just last week, I had a client that wanted double spaces after punctuation and sentences. I explained that a single space should be used because a double space creates a large space and disrupts the flow and tone of the paragraph. Very similar to rivers of white space that happen with justified type. After I explained it she agreed to the single space.

Chris, I'm really enjoying and learning a lot from the content you are sharing on YouTube. Thank You.

[alefalefalef]

This was like a college education in 3 minutes.

[fredzimmerman]

I think you meant “Align Left” not “Justify Left” for rule 1. I teach graphic design to high school students & people often get these terms mixed up. Justified text is when the line of text is spaced across the whole column width—often creating large gaps between words in order to have clean straight line endings. “Justified Left Rag Right” would mean the text is spaced across the column as before but the last line of a paragraph—if too short to properly space across the column—would simply be aligned to the left rather than adding huge awkward spaces between the words.

[PacFilms]

I learnt more about typography in 3:34 than I learnt at university where I studied graphic design. Really enjoyed the animation and how you combined many different skills to get your message across.