Typography Tuesday: Let it Breathe
Crowded vs. Breathing Room
Tips On Creating Websites With "Typography That Breathes:"
- Add some padding around your columns. Usually have 10 pixels of padding? Why not make it 20, or even 30? Experiment.
- Keep that line length (measure) at an optimal length. 45-75 characters is proven to be a nice digestible line length for columns.
- Add some line-height to that text. A good rule of thumb is the line height should be 20 percent of the font size (10pt font= 12pt leading)
- Always increase line-height when you increase the line length, and especially when you are using light text on a dark background.
Some Sites That Use White Space Well:

Check out this fantastic article on A List Apart for more on white space.
Very nice article. You make some great points on whitespace. It is something that most designers forget. I saw a website last night that had an 8pt font size on a black background all jumbled up. It made me cringe.
Great points. Adding enough padding around columns is something I’ve been advocating for a long time, many forget to do so or don’t pay much attention to it. But it makes a huge impact on typography. I always keep at least 20px padding around columns, it has become almost a rule when I design.
nice. I like the points made about the white space. I am new in the industry as i have only left university i year ago, all the tips i can get are a great help.
White space is your friend! Thank you for the tips. I am a fan of increasing line-height to let type breathe.
Come on…
http://www.geocities.com/laurencruise/whitespace.jpg
Must, say I liked the article a lot. I will have to experiment with line height on my site.
Isn’t the default browser setting for line-height already 120%? Generally, it should be increased to a minimum of 140%, more for smaller font sizes. For example, <abbr title="A List Apart">ALA</abbr> uses 180% for its paragraphs, which are 11.5px verdana.
Trackback URL: http://www.viget.com/trackback/1147/
Next entry: Getting Rid of Jaggies on Your Photo Borders
Previous entry: Getting Moody: A Look at Inspiration and Style in Early Design Techniques

Recent Comments
Great post. I am in my 8th year with PS, and I am guilty of every one of the ‘bad habits’ you listed. I know all the solutions you mentioned too. It really just must be laziness, or maybe...
- Doug on 'Breaking Bad Habits in Photoshop'.
- Bryan Kulba on 'Breaking Bad Habits in Photoshop'.
- Jon Thomas on 'Resizing rounded rectangles in Photoshop'.
Subscribe to Comments RSS