# Typography & Readability

**Track:** Design Foundations — Design & Human-Centered Design — proposed (25)
**Framework / surface:** design
**Level:** Beginner
**Prerequisites:** Visual Hierarchy & Emphasis

**In one line:** Type anatomy, hierarchy, and legibility — type as voice and as system.

## Theory, aesthetics & inspiration

Type is language given a body. Robert Bringhurst's "The Elements of Typographic Style" (1992) treats that body as both voice and system: a letter's anatomy — stem, bowl, counter, x-height — determines how a face speaks, while measure, leading, and the column decide whether a reader endures it. Bringhurst's rule of thumb, roughly sixty-six characters to the line, marks the difference between legibility, telling letters apart, and readability, reading for an hour. Ellen Lupton's "Thinking with Type" (2004) extends this into typographic hierarchy, where size, weight, and space rank meaning. Today WCAG 2.2's contrast and text-spacing minimums make legibility an auditable standard, not merely a craftsman's intuition.

## References

- [The Elements of Typographic Style](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Typographic_Style)
- [Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2](https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG22/)
- [Ellen Lupton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellen_Lupton)