Typography is Architecture
A brand site stands or falls on its type pair, and on the size and spacing of its display heads. Almost nothing else matters as much.
January 23, 2026
Most brand sites are wrong in their typography in the same way: the display face is set too small and the body face is set too tight. Both errors are inherited from screen UI conventions, where text is functional and the goal is information density.
Brand sites are not functional in that sense. They are read at a different pace, by a different reader, with a different goal. The reader is not scanning for a piece of information. They are forming an impression of a house. Typography is the structural element that delivers that impression first.
Display: larger than feels comfortable
The display headline on a brand-site hero should be set at a size that, on first composition, feels too large. 96–128 pixels for a tech archetype. 120–180 for luxury-heritage. 180–240 for fashion-editorial. At those sizes the headline is doing what the wordmark on a building’s façade does: it announces, in a single act, that the visitor has arrived somewhere.
Set the same headline at 48 pixels and the visitor has not arrived. They have started reading.
Body: looser than feels comfortable
Body text on a brand site benefits from leading set at 1.55–1.7 — looser than the 1.4–1.5 of standard UI. The looser leading reads as editorial, breathes on the page, and signals that the writing is meant to be read rather than skimmed. The reader, given that signal, does in fact read.
The pair
One display face, one body face, and a strict commitment to using only those two everywhere. No utility face for buttons. No different face for prices. No second display face for special occasions. The pair carries the site, and the discipline of restricting to the pair is the second-most-visible signal of seriousness, after the choice of archetype.