0

The image below is a more or less standard paragraph example for the website I'm trying to design. It's probably not much help for the question I'm asking, but I will try to further detail what I'm doing there.

  • font used is Roboto Black and Regular
  • the section has a margin top and bottom of 50px
  • the heading is 36px
  • the heading has 30px margin bottom starting from the underline (yellow line)
  • the paragraph is 18px with 27px leading (1.5 line-height)
  • the design is based on a 1170px grid (Bootstrap) if that's of any use

Typography example

To expand a bit on my question, I would like to know if the space between the heading and the paragraph is sufficient or it should be at least the size of the gap between the two paragraphs (which is 42px)

P.S. I feel like a tone deaf person trying to sing when I'm doing typography, so any constructive criticism is much appreciated.

Improve this question
3
  • 2
    At first glance I don't see any obvious mistakes. The grayish body text might be a little hard to see (letterforms are a bit thin), but overall the leading, margins, contrast, ragged right, etc. are attractive; nothing looks cramped. Be aware that longer line widths (wide columns) can be a little harder to read than narrower ones, but yours isn't excessive. We probably need to see more of the whole page to know how the elements work together. The yellow accent draws the eye to a feature that already stands out, the bold headline, so somewhat redundant -- but I don't hate it.
    – user8356
    Commented May 3, 2017 at 13:06
  • Please read our guidelines for critique questions and edit your question accordingly.
    – Wrzlprmft ♦
    Commented May 3, 2017 at 13:27
  • @user8356: The text has about 90 characters per line. I consider this too high.
    – Wrzlprmft ♦
    Commented May 3, 2017 at 13:29

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
0

This is always ultimately going to come down to the eye of the viewer. To my eye the vertical rhythm (and that's an important phrase, and one you can Google to learn lot more) looks fine in general, but I think the underline beneath the heading looks a little cramped. I'd open that up by about 5px. (ie, add 5px to whatever the padding on the heading is currently set to)

The line-lengths are a little long though. Aim for about 60 characters, whereas you have what looks at a glance to be about 100 (I haven't counted!), so either make your image larger in relation to the text column, or simnply reduce the text column and don't (ever) be afraid of white-space.

One tip to make typographic sites really sing, is to look into a jQuery based hyphenation plugin, and a relevant hyphenation dictionary. Just a random tip :)

Improve this answer
2
  • Thanks! The 5px padding really did the trick and now the vertical rhythm looks much better, even to my eyes. I've also adjusted the line length to about 70, but now the text and the image occupy 6 columns each and the image kind of eclipses the text (but a lighter, image with less contrast might fix that).
    – ChrisOm
    Commented May 4, 2017 at 7:05
  • Glad I could help, good luck with the project :)
    – mayersdesign
    Commented May 4, 2017 at 7:19

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.