Typography

Lato is the university’s primary typeface for the web and should be used for all body text, links. 

Reading and Contrast

Text legibility is dependent on the reader’s ability to distinguish letterforms from the background. The optimal combination for legibility is black text on white background.

Some things to avoid in your designs:

1. Colored backgrounds in main content areas that lack a strong contrast with the text.
2. Overusing other elements of contrast such as horizontal rules, decorative bullets, prominent icons, gradients and other visual markers. (They should be used sparingly for maximum effectiveness and to avoid being visually garish and busy with nothing emphasized.)
3. Hyperlinks in content areas must be underlined.

Web pages viewed on mobile devices are compromised by their mobile environment (e.g., small screens, tiny text, suboptimal screen resolution and color, glare, etc.). Pages viewed on some laptops and projectors appear washed out. Test your designs on a variety of devices in various lighting conditions.