Most typography advice is written for the average case, and the average case is not what you are designing. Rules like “never use more than two typefaces” survive because they are easy to repeat, not because they are always true.
Rules worth breaking
- Two typefaces maximum. A third face used only for small numeric labels rarely reads as clutter.
- Never centre body copy. Short blocks under three lines centre fine and often look deliberate.
- 16px minimum body size. Correct for reading text, wrong for captions and table data.
- Avoid all caps. Fine at small sizes with generous letter spacing.
Rules that hold
Line length still matters. Somewhere between 55 and 75 characters is where reading stops feeling like work, and no amount of art direction fixes a 120 character measure.
Contrast still matters. If the text fails at 4.5:1 it fails, regardless of how good the palette looks in the mockup.
“Break a rule when you can name what you gain. Otherwise you are just being different.”
The test is simple: hand the page to someone and watch where they slow down. If they slow down anywhere you did not intend, the rule was there for a reason.
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