The Quiet Typography Pitfall Undermining Your Credibility
Singapore business owners have a tendency, when evaluating their own business sites, to have an eye for the big, glaring visual elements, such as the hero image, color scheme, and navigation flow. Another visual aspect that often flies under the radar, though, is typography. Unfortunately, typography is responsible for a lot of design quality guilt for many business sites in Singapore.
Typography is not simply font selection; it is the entire system for choosing font. This includes font size, font weight, spacing, and consistency. When this system is done correctly, users can flow through your site, consume information, and intuitively feel that your site is professional and trustworthy. If it is done poorly, though, users feel that something is wrong, though they may not know exactly what.
The thing that makes typography mistakes so infuriating is that the business owners, who are often responsible for the site, cannot see the issue, though visitors who matter most to the business can feel every misstep.
In this article, the most common typography mistakes that plague business sites in Singapore, the reason they are important, and what good typography looks like in professional web design in Singapore are explored.
Mistake One: Too Many Typefaces Used Within One Site
If you were to visit enough business sites in Singapore, you will notice that there are often three, four, or five typefaces used across the same site, each having been added at a different time or by a different content producer.
This results in a mess that translates to disorganization, regardless of how good the content may be.
In web design in Singapore, the rules for typography suggest that only two typefaces should be used: one for headings, another for the body content. These are not randomly chosen; rather, they are informed by the principle that visual systems are ordered by the repetition of small numbers of elements rather than variety.
If you find that you are using more than two typefaces on your site, go through each page, list the typefaces used, and then make a deliberate decision to standardize to only two typefaces. Remove the rest.
A consistent set of typography styles, one for headings and one for body text, that matches your brand personality and is used on all pages of your site, will always look more professional than a mixed bag of styles accumulated over time.
More: Add Google map to your website for that easy win!
Mistake Two: Body Text Too Small for Easy Reading
This is such a common problem on Singapore business sites that it warrants its own spotlight. Body text set at a size of 13 or 14 pixels is simply too small for easy reading on a computer screen. The standard size of body text on web pages should be at least 16 pixels. Modern Singapore web designers recommend using a body text size of 17 or 18 pixels for maximum comfort. The logic is simple: what looks fine in size on a computer screen may not look so good on a mobile phone screen, especially when the user is reading while in public with varying levels of lighting. For Singaporean readers, body text that is too small is not just inconvenient – it is a reason to leave the site and not return. Examine your body text size. If you are reading this on a mobile phone, look at your own site on your own mobile phone. Ask yourself whether you can read the body text comfortably without straining your eyes. If you are straining, then your typography is in trouble.
Mistake Three: Line Height Too Tight, Hurting Readability
The line height of body text – the distance between the lines of text – is often not appreciated in Singapore web design and is frequently neglected. However, the importance of line height should not be underestimated. When the lines of text are crammed too tightly together, reading is a strain on the reader. The human eye has difficulty moving from the end of one line of text to the beginning of the next line of text.
For body text, the standard recommendation is to use a line height between 1.5 to 1.7 times the size of the text. In other words, if we are using 16 pixels for the text, we are shooting for 24 to 27 pixels for the line height. For headings, which are often scanned, it’s better to use a tighter line height, 1.1 to 1.3 times the size of the text.
These are not arbitrary rules; they are widely accepted standards for accessibility and readability. In fact, the WCAG 2.1 standard, which was published in 2018, has line spacing as part of its text spacing criteria, specifically stating that it should be at least 1.5x line height for body text.
Check out the line height for your website’s body text, especially in those sections with the most content, and make the necessary adjustments to meet this standard if it’s not already being followed.
Mistake Four: Centred Body Text That Hinders Reading Flow
Centred text can be very effective in certain cases, like headings, pull quotes, captions, or statements. It should not, however, be used for body text, which it often is in Singapore business websites.
Centred body text has several problems. It’s not very accessible, which means it’s not very user-friendly. English-speaking people are conditioned to read left to right and then return to the left margin to begin reading each new line. Centring the text means that this left margin isn’t there, which forces the eye to work much harder to find each new line. It’s very tiring to do this across multiple paragraphs.
As much as possible, left-align your body text – every single character, every single paragraph. If you do have centred body text in your service description, about us, or capability sections, then this is one of the most impactful typographic changes you can make to your website today.
Mistake Five: Low Colour Contrast Between Text and Background
Inadequate color contrast between text and background can cause problems with accessibility. It’s another common problem with many Singapore business websites, which often favor style over substance.Common display errors include light gray text on white, white text over a light photo, or dark navy text over dark blue. In an ideal mockup environment with a well-calibrated screen, these might look very good. But on a mobile screen in Singapore, with direct sunlight and glare, these are not going to be very readable.
WCAG 2.1 has a minimum requirement for 4.5:1 contrast ratio for normal text, with 7:1 being preferred for optimal accessibility. You can check this with free online tools like WebAIM’s Color Contrast Checker or Accessible Colors. Simply plug in your color values, and it will pass or fail against the standards.
For web design in Singapore, if you are doing it professionally, then it’s well worth striving to meet the higher standard of 7:1 for your body text, especially if you are targeting users reading your content in bright outdoor lighting conditions.
Mistake Six: Inconsistent Heading Hierarchy Across Pages
Typographic hierarchy helps users understand what’s important, what’s secondary, and what’s tertiary in your content. It’s based upon an underlying typographic structure where each heading level has its own size, color, and possibly weight. H1 headings are for titles, H2 headings are for main sections, and H3 headings are for subsections.
What often goes wrong with web design in Singapore for businesses isn’t the quality of the individual heading designs, it’s the fact that there’s often a lack of consistency between pages. When headings vary in size for the same heading type, vary in font weights, or vary in color, it gives users the impression that things are chaotic. And chaotic does not equate with professional, which is what we are trying to achieve with your web design investment.
All levels of headings should be the same across your entire site. An H2 heading should look the same on your services page as it does on your about page or blog page.Mistake Seven: Beautiful Fonts That Drag Down Speed
While using custom web fonts from Google Fonts, Adobe Fonts, or other font libraries, you can unlock a world of new font options and styles far beyond the limited options of system fonts. However, these custom web fonts come at a price, and many Singapore business websites still haven’t learned the hard way.
If the fonts aren’t loaded correctly, the website speed suffers. This might lead to FOIT (text becomes invisible until the font loads) or FOUT (text displays for a moment and then changes to the custom font). In both cases, the user experience suffers, and the website appears to be of poor quality even before the user reads a single word. This is a technical issue for many Singapore business websites, and the use of custom web fonts needs to be carefully assessed for its impact on website speed.
Mistake Eight: Decorative Fonts as Body Text
While decorative fonts, script fonts, and display fonts have their place, they’re typically used for titles, logos, or other short pieces of text. This is because they add a level of personality to your website. When these fonts are used for body text, they quickly become a nuisance. This is because the same characteristics of the font that make it appealing as a title or logo become tiresome when used for body text. This mistake often occurs for lifestyle, wellness, and creative business websites in Singapore, where the decorative font of the business website is used as the font for the entire website.The basic idea is this: decorative and script fonts are for display only. In your body text, regardless of your brand’s voice, you should use a type face designed for screen reading: simple, sans-serif, or well-designed serif type that looks good on screens.
Typography is the foundation upon which your content stands
All the content on your Singapore design website, from the description of your services to the value statements, to the case studies, to the calls to action, communicates its message through typography. When your typography foundation is good, your content will stand tall with the emphasis you’ve given it. When it’s not, your content will not matter.
As the pre-eminent typographer Robert Bringhurst wrote in his classic book The Elements of Typographic Style (1992; fourth edition, 2008): “Typography exists to honour its content.” It’s a truth that’s relevant to Singapore business websites, where the aim is to establish trust, convey value, and engage interested customers.
Fix your typography. Honour your content. And suddenly your website will work much better.