Mobile Typography: Don’t Make This Mistake

On September 12, we’re putting on our next event (a virtual one)—The Mobile UX Summit. We’ve hit up Josh Clark, Brad Frost, Theresa Neil, Greg Nudelman, Jason CranfordTeague, and Mike Fisher for 27 tips and 2 case studies on designing mobile experiences. You’ll walk away with new mobile UX insight and skills, get some questions answered—and the session recordings are included with your registration.

This week we asked Jason CranfordTeague about the most important mistake to avoid with mobile typography:

Don’t think that you can simply squeeze the desktop/laptop screen type into a smaller area. Working with responsive typography is more than just proportionally scaling text up or down for the screen; you’ve also got to consider its context.

For example, it’s common to use HTML links for navigation to articles (e.g., “Read More”). In most cases these need to be scaled up or converted into more finger friendly buttons for a mobile device. It’s so frustrating, though, when even some “responsive” web sites make me keep stabbing my finger at a tiny navigation link until I finally hit its contact area.

Instead of just resizing text, remember to consider how the text will actually be read or used. Links should be easily clickable, and headers may need to scale down more than body copy to prevent very short lines of text. I’ll give you some tips on how to do this at The Mobile UX Summit.

Sign up now to reserve your virtual seat at our Mobile UX Summit on September 12!