Typography that makes a template feel premium

When someone says a site feels expensive, they rarely mean the colors or the illustrations. They mean the type: how big it is, how tight, how calm. You can make a simple layout feel premium with typography alone.

Fewer sizes, bigger contrast

Pick four or five sizes and stick to them. A large display size for headlines, a medium size for section titles, one body size, one small size for captions and labels. The jump between the display size and the body should be dramatic. Timid hierarchies with ten sizes that are all slightly different look unfinished.

Tighten large type

Big headlines need negative letter spacing. Most grotesk fonts are spaced for reading at 16px, so at 64px they look loose. Pull the tracking in, tighten the line height to around one, and suddenly the headline looks set by hand instead of typed.

Let a mono do the small jobs

A monospaced font for tiny uppercase labels, like dates, categories and counts, adds texture and a sense of precision. Keep it small and quiet, in a muted color. It’s seasoning, not the meal.

Give body text room

• Keep line length around 60 to 75 characters.

• Use a line height near 1.5 to 1.7 for paragraphs.

• Set body text slightly lighter than headings, in a soft gray instead of pure black.

Use one family, well

It’s tempting to pair three fonts. Usually one good grotesk in two or three weights, plus a mono for labels, is enough. This site uses exactly that. The restraint is what makes it feel intentional.