Thanks to the improvement of cascading style sheets, web typography today is much more attractive and controlled. The web is also dominated by publishing platforms such as Wordpress and Movable Type. The growing popularity of these platforms is great for writers, as they make both styling and publishing content easy and possible all from one page.

By observing typographic design in print, we can learn how to enhance articles online.

With all of these great improvements, I find it interesting that web typography is starting to look more like magazine layouts. This–in my mind–is a great thing. Publication designers have mastered the use of both engaging and readable typography. By observing typographic design in print, we can learn how to enhance articles online. Here is a list of concepts that can easily be applied to blog articles, to make them more attractive:

Pull Quotes: also known as a lift-out quote or a call-out, this concept allows the reader to breath between paragraphs and also engages them with a larger typeface or offset location.

Horizontal Rules: Thin rules between certain content also gives breathing space to the reader and makes the information architecture of an article, easy to navigate. This article from UX Magazine is a nice example. Try to keep horizontal rules thin, if they become too thick, a distraction occurs between the rule and the content, this relates to the concept of chartjunk.

Introductory Images: This concept is the most popular, not typographic, but it does engage the viewer very quickly. A List Apart is one good example of illustration being used. Don’t have an illustrator waiting around? Neither do I, but photos work too.

Bold Type: Good for enhancing lists like this one.

With the power of one click publishing, it’s sometimes easy to forget that we can make the design of the writing more attractive. Want to learn more about web typography, start here: webtypography.net