As a designer or just a simple business owner planning on launching a website, choosing the perfect fonts looks like an easy task at first, but later becomes a never-ending agony once you dive in the immense range of options.
Should you choose a Serif font? Should you go for a thin body or a strong one? Do you need special characters? Do you like the modern font families or the old style ones? If there were just 5 fonts it would be so easy to choose one and be happy with it. With big variety come big decisions.
At least we have Helvetica, which we love and hate, both at the same time. It’s overused, that’s right, but let’s face it: It’s so good!
Here are some tips that will help you decide faster:
1. Your font needs to be legible.
There are a lot of things that need to be taken into consideration for a text to be “functional”. Besides the formatting and colour, the typeface is also very important. Use a clean font, one that is easy to read. If you use a fancy swirly font, your visitors will probably give up after the first few sentences.
2. Use the fancy fonts in the titles.
While the content font needs to be legible in small sizes (10px – 12px), you can use the special fonts you like in the headings. Not only they are bigger – therefore easier to make out what’s there – we’re talking about just a few words, not a whole lot of copy.
3. Match it yo your design.
Let’s say you have a Book Store and your website has a mysterious old style look. Under any circumstances, don’t choose a very modern quadratic font.
The most important rule: DO NOT use Comic Sans. Just don’t.