Sven Lennartz

About The Author

Sven Lennartz Sven is the co-founder and former CEO of Smashing Magazine. He’s now writing at his Conterest Blog, where he focuses on blogs, content strategy and publishing — all in German.

The Showcase Of BIG Typography - Second Edition

In Web typography doesn’t have to support the overall design. It can dominate. It can be loud. It can be bold. And it can be everywhere on a web-site. In many situations it’s reasonable to give the typography the prominent position it deserves, leaving visual cues in the background or removing them at all. Doing that, you have to risk large font sizes surrounded by a generous amount of...

In Web typography doesn’t have to support the overall design. It can dominate. It can be loud. It can be bold. And it can be everywhere on a web-site. In many situations it’s reasonable to give the typography the prominent position it deserves, leaving visual cues in the background or removing them at all. Doing that, you have to risk large font sizes surrounded by a generous amount of white space. What comes out of it? Elegant web sites with a unique form, style and sense of precision.

Few months ago we have already presented some sites with quite BIG typography. In this article we present further 55 examples of big, “loud” and yet elegant typography in web design; some listed designs are Flash-based, and in some cases designs are based not only upon typography, but also upon some visual elements.

Please take a look at the following posts as well:

The Showcase Of BIG Typography

Designfabrika
Görsel Işler's porotfolio with a vibrant typography from Turkey. The design looks attractive and appealing.

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Azzabee.com.au
Azzabee uses big typography in a rotating Flash-based promo. The navigation menu is perfectly integrated in the promo using PNG transparency. Very elegant and effective design solution.

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Natl.tv
National Television is a project which uses bold, loud and sexy typography within a Flash-based design. Very playful, impressive and interesting to explore. Some content of the site may be hard to read, though.

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Neubau Berlin
Letters, letters, letters. NeuBau is a German type-foundry which is why typography is used everywhere on the site. The typeface used is NB-Grotesk. The design isn't intuitive at all, but that's all about typography, right?

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JLern Design
JLern Design presents the typography from a quite unusual perspective. Nice, compact and typography-heavy design solution. Flash in use.

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Are you a virgin?
AIGA's another concept based only on typography. The current section of the site is presented with a bold and colorful typography.

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Hungry Man
Hungry man seems to be hungry for job as well. A really distinctive design with a little bit retro-look.

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256tm.com
256TM is a font foundry by Thomas Huot-Marchand. Below the splash-page is presented. The navigation menu is, of course, based upon pure typography, too.

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Elmwood
Elmwood isn't really humble and uses typography to emphasize exactly this. Effective use of typography for promotional purposes. After all, it's all about impressing people, right?

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Erratic Wisdom
Not only is the typography quite bold, it is yellow too! Designed by Tom Fadial.

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Switch Mediaworks
Switch Mediaworks is a pretty lively web-site with a pretty lively typography.

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Shut.elmota.com

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Mike Precious

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Newsmap
Newsmap displays current stories and their popularity in a news map. More important messages are displayed with bold typography.

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Fixie

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Sean Klassen
Sean Klassen loves Helvetica and wears pants. Both his splash-page and his blog are heavy on typography.

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Postmachina.com
Postmachina uses typography to deliver the message...

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Chris Garrett Media
...so does Chris Garrett. Color transition in use...

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Francesco Mugnai
...and so does Francesco Mugnai.

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Freshe.st
Bill Morrison has a small web-site, but uses large and bold typography.

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Ourtype.be
Ourtype is a Belgian type foundry which showcases its typefaces at large scale. When you scroll the page, type seems to be a little bit shaky.

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Kokokaka
Kokokaka sounds pretty strange, but this is how a Swedish design agency is called. Their web-site uses capital caps and very colorful links.

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Organic Grid
Michael McDonald with dynamic Flash-based typographic design.

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Colorcubic.com
Sometimes one can experiment with geometric shapes as well. Colorcubic uses illustrations which look like typography, but are indeed not letters.

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Pier Madonia
Pier Madonia showcases his work using a large typography-based navigation menu. That's an unusual approach which isn't intuitive but still simple to understand and to use. The sub-menu is pretty large, too. And, of course, uses only typography.

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Alex Cohaniuc
Alex Cohaniuc uses typography for his categories...

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I Love Typography
...John Boardley for the title of his site.

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Brunet Garcia

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Studio Number One

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300million.com
On 300million letters fly, jump and float. Created with Flash.

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Twistori.com
Twistori is an ongoing social experiment which analyzes messages sent to Twitter and presents them in a scrolling window. With large and vibrant typography.

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Daniel Hagglund

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Vision 7
On Vision 7 the typography is literally squeezed insind a tiny and short layout. The letters are nevertheless huge.

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Wind Jammer
Not really beautiful, but big and large. This company from London seems to have its own style when it comes to choice of letters.

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Mattia Viviani

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Paco Raphael

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ixwa.com
Sometimes typography can be large yet remain subtle and support the content of the site...

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Visie.com.br

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Futonmedia

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Babasonicos.com
Babasonicos uses bold and pretty colorful typography in the navigation. This may not be the perfect solution from the usability-perspective, but the site perfectly achieves its primary goal, namely to appear lively and colorful — just the way the band is in its pretty strange videos.

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Topos Graphics
Topos Graphics: a start page with "mirrored" typography.

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Popart Blog
Typography for headlines gone bold. The headline literally stands out.

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Nu Visual Language

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Urbanchip

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Mike Poss

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Marie Julien

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Berlin.unlike.net
Bold typography supports the design. It doesn't stand out but it is visible.

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