One of the easiest and best ways to create hierarchy using size (the best way to separate things by size) is to use a constant ratio of size to bump things up. You’ve probably heard of the “Golden Ratio,” which …
Tip 23: Letterspace capitals, small caps, and numbers
We talked about letterspacing before, when I said not to letterpsace the lower case. Now we’re going to talk about what it is appropriate—or even encouraged. Anytime you’re typing in all-caps, it’s good to add some letterspacing. When would you …
Tip #22: Know the difference between Helvetica and Arial
Helvetica comes on Macs and Arial comes on PCs, but that’s not the end of what divides them. Arial was acutally designed in-house at Microsoft to have the same spacing as Helvetica; basically, this means that if you took a …
Tip #21: Spell it out for them
Mystery meat menu icons—or hamburger icons—are essentially useless. Just make your menu button say “menu.” Seriously. There are plenty of studies to back this up, but we don’t need all those. When you see a hamburger icon, do you know …
Tip #20: It’s all about color and type
Every mobile platform has its own style guide with preferred ways to create common user interface elements, so how do you stand out? The two main ways: Color and type. A millions apps and websites use blue and green and …
