Typography Basics for Non-Designers

Most "this design looks kind of amateurish" reactions trace back to typography, not color or layout — and most of the fixes are simple once you know what to look for.

Limit yourself to two typefaces

One for headings, one for body text — that's genuinely enough for the overwhelming majority of designs. Every additional typeface adds visual noise and makes the design feel less intentional, not more sophisticated. If you want variation, get it from weight (bold, regular) and size, not from a third font.

Line length has a sweet spot

Lines of body text that are too wide are genuinely tiring to read — your eye has to travel a long distance and find the start of the next line. Somewhere around 50–75 characters per line is the widely-cited comfortable range for long-form reading; much wider than that, and readability measurably drops.

Line height needs room to breathe

Body text set with line height equal to (or barely more than) the font size feels cramped and is harder to scan. A line height of roughly 1.4–1.6 times the font size is a reliable, comfortable default for most body text — tight enough to feel connected, loose enough to breathe.

Hierarchy through size, weight, and space — not just size

New designers often create hierarchy with size alone (bigger heading, biggest heading). Weight (bold vs. regular) and spacing (more room around a heading) create hierarchy just as effectively, often with less visual clutter than simply scaling everything up.

Alignment should be consistent, not decorative

Centered text works for very short lines — a headline, a button label. For paragraphs, left-aligned (in left-to-right languages) is almost always more readable, because the eye can reliably find the start of each new line in the same place every time.

Contrast is not optional

Text needs sufficient contrast against its background to be legible — this is a real accessibility requirement, not a style choice, and it's measurable (the WCAG contrast ratio guidelines). Beautiful, low-contrast text that fails this check isn't a design win; it's a design that excludes real users.

The takeaway

Two typefaces, a comfortable line length, generous line height, hierarchy built from weight and space rather than size alone, consistent alignment, and real contrast — that's the bulk of typography that actually matters for someone who isn't a dedicated type designer.