To make something look good in color, it’s best to make sure it looks good in greyscale. Why? Because if there’s not enough contrast in greyscale, then there’s probably not enough contrast in color. Pay extra attention to this when …
Tip #24: Use constant ratios to create hierarchy
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 …
