When typography is good, no one notices. When it's bad, no one can tell you why. This is the curse and the joy of the craft: the best work is invisible, and the bad work is just a vague discomfort that nobody can name.
The four levers
Almost every typographic decision lives on one of four axes: type size, line height, line length, and space. Get those right and the rest takes care of itself. Get them wrong and no amount of font choice will save you.
- Measure: aim for 50–75 characters per line for body text.
- Leading: roughly 1.4–1.6× the type size for body, 1.05–1.2× for display.
- Hierarchy: 2–3 distinct sizes per surface, not 5.
- Spacing: let the grid breathe, but never let it show.
“Typography is the one craft where restraint is indistinguishable from mastery.”
The work is to remove things until the page can carry them. That last step — where the type stops competing with itself — is the only one that matters.