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Is big type more than just beautiful?

Posted on: Tuesday, February 24th, 2009 by Michael Boeck

One of the big web design trends forecasted for 2009 is the usage of big type, according to Smashing Magazine, an online magazine which features examples of design trends. Here you can see examples of web designers using big letters, which as we know from news headlines in papers or magazines, shout ‘BUY ME” from the news stand just as you walk past your local news agent. I wonder how this typographic trend benefits the web and if there is functionality in using big type online? Let’s look into that for a moment. Considering that big type has a purpose in editorial or publishing design, that is, getting the attention of a potential buyer walking down the road, what could be the benefit of big type taking a sizable proportion of my screen, making me scroll rather than read? Why over-advertise content with in-your-face type if the distance between me and my screen is less than the length of an arm? And after all, can it be considered an advantage if big letters on your screen let all your colleagues in the office know what keeps you busy throughout working hours? From a functionality point of view some might come to the conclusion that some designers and developers alike get a bit over-zealous by not only converting their True Type fonts into accessible sIFR Flash files but also by magnifying them out of due proportion.

Let’s change the perspective. Another school of thought may suggest a more editorial feel and could argue that certain sites should look less utilitarian in order to entice their readership into an article, because after all, who enjoys reading phone directory style sites with lots of one-size-fits-all letters and layouts with little contrast or no white space to guide the eye? Bearing in mind that the way we have learnt to read the web is linked to how we have learnt to read newspapers and other printed content, it is probably a valid point to say that large type and variation in size helps us to identify the important from the less meaningful parts.

newspapers and web headlines

Furthermore, visual style gives us clues as to the type of content and by that, guides us and helps us in making decisions on whether content is of interest to us or not. In that sense bigger headers set in a unique typeface and contrasting sizes as a visual reference to its content adds functionality too. I also suspect that, had web fonts such as Verdana been working typographically in bigger sizes, web designers would have used bigger type long before sIFR technology enabled us to use better and more aesthetically pleasing type faces.

In the short term this super large type trend could level out, as seen many times before when new tricks and technical novelties had to be used excessively only to be ‘so last month’ a day later. What remains are the universal questions that a designer has to find the right answers for; what message do we want to bring across, how are we going to do it and what technology is at hand to enable the best possible result? Form Follows Function springs to mind but this over-used phrase doesn’t encourage personality nor flair so much as cool rationale and solid ground reasoning. In addition to Form Follows Function I promote the emotive aspects of the design process and believe that a wider variety of fonts and more liberalism in form of contrasting sizes should give web designers the option to style pages more reflective of their content – in that sense, how about Form Follows Meaning?