Giant Typography
1st edition — by Patrick McNeil — Aug. 3, 2007
The Design Element
The use of giant typography on the web is not only fun, its practical and actually addresses some key design issues. First, and perhaps most obviously, it absolutely reeks of hierarchy. One of the most basic methods of creating hierarchy in a design is through scale. And these sites have certainly taken that to an extreme. If you happen to be asking why this is important I must only remind you that enabling users to easily consume a chunk of content (in any medium) is of the utmost importance. If you look at something huge and daunting with no sense of hierarchy, and thus, no sense of where to start, it can become quiet easy to give up. Hierarchy enables consumers to easily get the portion of information they are after. I can't count the number of times I have found some online tutorial for coding something and have used the hierarchy of the page to skip the explanation and go straight to the solution!
Secondly, and very related to the first point, the use of giant type is the equivalent of beating the user over the head with your message.
TheHumanAgency
is my favorite example of this. Before they let you into the site you get this landing page with a simple statement of what they do. There is no mystery about what lies ahead. THis is so refreshing, sure I hate landing pages, but this one is actually useful. Many sites for design shops are confusing and it isn't always clear they are in fact a design firm. THis clears the air and lays it out there. The large type ensures you get this portion of the message.
Large type not only lets you employ the natural beauty found in many of the typefaces available to designers, but also gives you a megaphone with which to speak. This jumbo sized type will become the focus of the page if you make use of the style, so be sure to say something important!
Sample Usage
Links
Elements
of Typographic Style Applied to the Web
Five
simple steps to better typography
Text
sizing (tons of screenshots showing variations by browser and platform)
Type Tester (great tool for deciding on typefaces)
sIFR
The Elements of Typographic Style Applied to the Web
CSS
Based Image Replacement (Replace text with an image of text)
