Make the Fonts on Your Website Work For You Instead of Against You
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Ever look at those cool fonts on some websites and wish you could jazz up the fonts on your site. Well before you do that, learn how fonts can enhance your message or make it more difficult for your visitors to follow and understand.
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Typographical considerations often get shoved-unwisely-under the table in web design. Sure, there's a lot to be said for spending time on a slick banner and color palette, and a clean design aesthetic certainly goes a long way in establishing a great impression for your visitor. But underneath all that is text, which is where your visitors ultimately go to find what they need. Hey, even website photo galleries have labels. In order to establish or improve your website usability, there are a few things you need to keep in mind about your text.
Keep it big and loose. Back in the beginning of the 20th century, when iPads were called "newspapers" and Dreamweaver was a "press," designers had to produce their layouts by painstakingly crafting small metal letters and arranging them carefully-and backwards-on a cumbersome iron frame. If there was ever a size or spacing issue that reduced readability, that was fine-people would get over it.
Nowadays, website visitors are pickier, but thankfully we can change font size and spacing with the click of a mouse, something many designers apparently fail to remember. There's simply no excuse for not keeping your font legible-10 - 12 pt sans-serif fonts for most paragraph text, and 14 or more if you've got older visitors or something especially important to say.
Spacing (or "leading" in the publishing industry) needs to be bigger than your font, preferably at a 1.15 - 1.5 ratio to keep your text loose and easy to read. An exception would be in your multi-line titles or headings, where spacing needs to be small and tight. Also, rigid justifications are almost universally considered unfriendly outside of journalistic publications.
Stand out. One quick note on font color: make it contrast with the background (a black font on a white background is the best for readability). If you must to use the same colors, fine, just make sure the difference in shade is extreme (a dark blue background with a navy blue font will not be easy to read...in fact it will look like some sort of a secret message). Between font colors and background colors, contrast is a good thing. Without it, website usability will suffer. Got it? Good. Carry on.
Font choice is a popularity contest. There are just a select few fonts that are factory installed on everyone's computer. Cool, new fonts may look great, but you want to be sure that when the visitor goes to your website, that they're seeing on their computer is the same font you specified in the design of your website. If your cool new font isn't installed on their computer, then what they will see on their screen is their computer's default font which may ruin the whole look and feel of your website. Best advice is to stick to the basics where possible-Arial and Helvetica. Of course, while serif fonts (the ones with the little gizmos that finish off the tops and bottoms of most letters) are easier to read in print, sans-serifs (the ones without the little gizmos) dramatically increase website usability by keeping things smooth and easy to read on a bright screen. No need to delve into the science here, but for some reason, that's the way it is - something to do with pixels not dealing well with those small serifs.
Stay true. Few things are more important in your website typography than staying consistent. Keeping it simple certainly helps a website's usability. Sure, those artsy websites do cool stuff with clashing fonts, but they're artists, and their websites are supposed to make us think an react - their use of type is part of their message.
For most websites though, the goal with website typography is not to permanently catch the eye, but to feed it the information the visitor needs and then draw them along. Save your dramatic fonts for the points of action on your website; places where you need to emphasize a point or provide directions for the visitor (add to cart, proceed to checkout or download now). In order to maintain website usability, the rest of your body text needs to remain helpfully unobtrusive, neither gripping the user's eye, nor putting it off.
So when you think about fonts and type think: big and loose, easy to read, one that's on everyone's computer and is so commonplace that visitors coming to your website focus not on your fonts but on your words, on your compelling content.
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