Typography Tips: How to Choose the Perfect Fonts for Your Web Design

What makes a great website? A beautiful design, a clear and easy-to-understand layout, a seamless user experience, and engaging and informative content – indeed, all these things contribute to the success of your website. One thing that may fall the wayside is the font you use in your design. While some may dismiss it as a simple aesthetic choice, the font you use can affect the overall look of your website as well as the perception of your audience of your brand. In this article, we’ll discuss why your fonts matter and give you the top tips to remember when choosing perfect fonts to use on your website. Let’s dive in!

Why Is Your Font Choice Important?

Your font and overall typography do more than display your website text. Different fonts can convey different vibes or personalities. This is why we see Comic Sans as “kiddy” or playful while associating Times New Roman with formal documents. So, depending on the font you use, it can help reinforce the image you want your brand to be seen as. Your typography matters as well. How you arrange your letters, the space between each letter and the size and weight of your font can affect your design’s readability and cohesion.

How To Choose the Perfect Fonts For Your Website

Now that you know the importance of your font choice, let’s talk about choosing the best font for your website. Here are some things to keep in mind:

Understand Your Brand

Your website is an integral part of your brand, which is why your website must convey the same image and identity you want to portray. And ideally, your font should be able to do all of that. Let’s start with your brand identity first. What do you want your brand to be known as? Playful and fun? Professional and on top of their game? Friendly and approachable? Sophisticated and chic? And so on. Consider specific elements such as business name, logo, and tagline that will reflect this identity.

Next, let’s examine your target audience. Each demographic will have a preference for a specific font style. For example, professional corporate workers respond better to clean and simple fonts, while trendy Gen Zs respond better to bold and playful typographies.

The overall goals of your website should also be established. Do you want your website to be a creative visual experience for your audience? Or do you want it to be a simple hub of information where they can learn more about your products and services? Knowing these things lets you narrow down perfect fonts that are more suitable for your brand.

Prioritize Readability

You might be tempted to put the fanciest, most intricate font in your design. The fancier the font, the more visually striking it will be, right? While beautiful fonts and unique typography add visual interest to your website, designs that are too complicated might distract your audience from reading your content. Make sure you prioritize readability before anything else. Your website font should be easy to read, especially for long text content. It should not strain your audience’s eyes or distract them from understanding your content.

Some ways to make them more readable are:

• Save the fancy fonts for headlines. Use simpler fonts for your body text.
• Your body text should not be too big or too small. A good font size to use is around 16 pixels.
• Have adequate line spacing so that your texts do not crowd each other.
• Ensure a good contrast between your text and your background. If your font color is too similar to the background color, it won’t be easy to see. On the other hand, if your background color contrasts too sharply with your text, it will also be straining to read. Find the right balance.
• If it fits your branding, use sans-serif fonts for your body text. Sans-serif fonts are easier to read on digital screens. Some perfect fonts to consider are Arial, Futura, and Helvetica.

Consider Web-safe Fonts

Imagine working on a website and capping it off with a beautiful font… only for it not to show appropriately once you are done. Some text is unreadable or gives your page some very awkward-looking spaces. What a waste, right? A solution for this is to use web-safe fonts. These perfect fonts are universally present in the majority of computers, devices, and browsers. This means whether you’re using a Macbook or a Samsung phone, Firefox, or Google Chrome, these fonts will be displayed correctly and without errors.

Here’s a list of web-safe fonts that you can use:

• Arial
• Brush Script MS
• Courier New
• Garamond
• Georgia
• Tahoma
• Times New Roman
• Trebuchet MS
• Verdana

Web-safe fonts are ideal for websites (or anything online) as there’s less chance of your fonts not displaying as intended. But does this mean you can’t use a non-web-safe font in your designs? Not really. You can still use any font as long as you run thorough tests and carefully monitor them to see if they are displaying properly. You can also set up fallback fonts, which are the fonts that will be displayed in the event your fonts do not load properly. For best results, use web-safe fonts for your fallback fonts.

Be Strategic When Pairing Fonts

There is no need to stick to just one font on your website. Feel free to use 2 or 3, as it adds more visual interest. However, make sure the fonts you choose complement each other. The fonts should generally have the same style while still looking distinct. Let’s imagine that you have a corporate website. Pairing your formal fonts with an extremely cutesy or whimsical font can send conflicting messages. But pairing them with a modern, rounded font that still looks professional can give your website a more varied look without sacrificing professionalism.

The same logic applies to other designs. A graffiti-style text won’t look good paired with a delicate handwritten font, while a chunky, rounded font combined with a 70’s 70-style retro font can give off a beautiful Y2K aesthetic. Sans-serif fonts and serif fonts are typically paired with each other. This is because the modern look of sans-serif fonts provides a nice contrast to the formal look of serif fonts. Try Lato and Merriweather, Lato and Roboto, Open Sans and Times New Roman, or Playfair Display and Raleway.

Don’t go over three fonts, as too many different fonts can make your website look cluttered and confusing. Consider the rules of visual hierarchy as well. For example, use bold weights, uppercase letters, or bigger sizes for your headlines. These will give more emphasis to your texts, which is fitting for headlines. Meanwhile, sticking to regular font weights for your body text can make it easier to read.

Always Test

Even with all the advice, you won’t know if something will work until you see it. So, our last (and probably most important) tip is to test. Test everything before you commit to using it on your website. Can’t decide which font to use? Create mockups of them first. Want to pair different fonts together? Try them side by side to see how they look with each other.

Colors will also affect how your font looks. To check the contrast, test different color variations of your text and white, black, and colored backgrounds. You can also experiment with adding textures, patterns, or effects to your text or background.

Are you happy with your font choice? Once you’ve used them on your website, check how they look on different devices and browsers. Whether you use web-safe fonts or not, it’s still important to do a customary check to ensure everything is displayed correctly and accurately in your creative visions.

What Are Other Elements You Need for a Great Website?

Now that you have your font, it’s time to build the rest of your website. Start with the visuals. Choose a beautiful color scheme that adheres to your branding. Don’t forget to add your logo design as well. And make sure all your photographs, illustrations, icons, and buttons are aligned with your brand style.

Next is your user experience. Is the website easy to navigate? Are all the buttons and links working correctly? Can your audience quickly find the information they need? Are the pages loading as fast as possible? Lastly is your content. Is your website content relevant, informative, and engaging to your audience? Is it easy to read and understand? Is it free of grammatical errors? And so on.

All of these factors contribute to a beautiful website. Once you have all of this in place, you can create your website by coding it yourself, using website builders, or hiring an expert in web design.

Choosing Perfect Fonts – Wrapping Up

Your website serves as your digital “office.” It’s where people will get more information about you, learn about your products or services, get exposed to your marketing campaigns, and so on. It’s not an exaggeration to say that getting your website right can significantly contribute to the success of your business. While your website font may seem like a minor detail in the greater scheme of things, it plays a huge factor in contributing to a beautiful and cohesive website. By following the tips above, you’ll be on your way to designing a website that is more appealing to your audience.