Majority of UI designs are commonly made up of elements like boxes, words, buttons, icons, images and fonts. All of these play a very important role in design. They also facilitate consistency, which is a key factor in any interface. Here are some best font practices to apply when designing the UI.
Hierarchy and font sizes
Hierarchy helps improve the scannability and readability of an interface by making it easier for users to find important information quicker. Using bigger, bolder text for the most important information helps draw people’s eyes towards it. For the less important information, smaller, lighter text is optimal.
Line height, width and spacing
Line height is important since it determines whether text is readable or not. There is too much white space if the line spacing is too large. The text appears to be odd. Letters appear squeezed together if line spacing is too small. Line height that is optimal guarantees that lines of text have sufficient spacing between them for good readability.
Number of fonts
Using different fonts for different sections or information pages is a usual practice. However, the number of fonts you are adding in your design needs to be carefully decided with the audience and purpose in mind. A mix of fonts can sometimes be confusing to the layman's eyes and might break the interest of the consumer as it takes more effort to grasp the information presented. Ideally, 2-3 is a good number of fonts to go with.
Emphasize
Emphasis is a technique for drawing the viewer's attention to a particular design feature. This could be to a section of information, an image, a link, or a button, for example. The goal is to create a design point of focus: an eye-catching piece that stands out from the rest of the design elements. There is a very small window of time to grab the users’ attention and imprint our idea on their mind. This is where emphasis comes into play.
Typography that is well-designed can be pleasing to the eye. There's a side to science that we frequently overlook, and it's the side where form and function merge. Simple font styles can be greatly improved by tiny tweaks such as font size, line height, letter spacing, and so on. Similarly, 'beautiful' fonts can become ugly when they're unreadable, owing to the fact that frustration always supersedes aesthetics.
How important do you think font practices are?