Legibility refers to the design of the typeface, as in the width of the strokes, whether or not it has serifs, the presence of novel type design elements etc. It is easy to tell one letterform from another in a legible typeface. For instance, decorative typefaces have low legibility because they are primarily meant to be seen at a glance, rather than read at length. Conversely, typefaces designed for novels or newspapers have very high legibility. You need to design a specific, overall legibility based on the function of the text.

how to choose fonts

Here are some popular handwritten fonts and personality traits. Handwritten fonts help businesses communicate with their audience more personally, as if the message was written specifically to them. They tend to evoke feelings of authenticity and friendliness choosing fonts for website that can be both playful and elegant, depending on the style and how it’s used. Tweak, twist and fine-tune your decorative fonts to define how you want to display them. Brands like Fanta, LEGO, Disney, McDonald’s and many others have adopted this font type.

Choosing the Right Typeface

It’s worth trying everything just to see what happens — even wearing your Halloween flares to your court date. At their best, transitional and modern faces seem strong, stylish, dynamic. At their worst, they seem neither here nor there — too conspicuous and baroque to be classic, too stodgy to be truly modern. Every designer has a few favorite fonts like this — expressive personal favorites that we hold onto and wait for the perfect festive occasion to use. More often, I find myself putting on the same old pair of Levis morning after morning.

how to choose fonts

You may realize, after a thorough analysis, you need five fonts (not typefaces) to cover your various heading, sub-headings and call-outs. Can your typeface provide enough variation with bolds, italics and small caps? Or do you need two typefaces to create more distinction in the hierarchy?

Font Pairing Ideas That Work

Since fonts play a key role in website and packaging design, choosing the perfect font can be hugely beneficial for any brand. Below, we have gathered some more tips to help you understand how to choose the best font for your logo or brand design and how to combine different fonts in your project. “For a paragraph, which needs to be highly legible, you shouldn’t use something with ambiguous shapes,” says type designer Octavio Pardo. Decorative fonts like Comfortaa (shown above) can be difficult to read at length, so for long texts stick to highly legible ‘workhorse’ fonts like Alegreya or Bellefair. Optimizing font files and minimizing their size is crucial for improving web performance and reducing load times. Use tools like Font Squirrel’s Webfont Generator or Google Fonts to generate optimized font files and serve only the necessary font styles, weights, and character sets.

how to choose fonts

Each of these characteristics requires some degree of independent consideration. As you may already know from experience, it’s easy to go about this the wrong way and get overwhelmed. Take a look at this poster designed for the Tribeca Film Festival.

Serif + Sans Serif

Before we dive into the nitty-gritty of font choice, I’d like to review the role that fonts play in visual communication. Design visual brand experiences for your business whether you are a seasoned designer or a total novice. With a tool like Visme, you can easily create and share branded visual content of all kinds.

Once you’ve established a body font, it’s time to move on to headers. Eventually, you’ll have to consider how the header font pairs with the body font but for now, just focus on finding header fonts that fit your content. Use the purpose, length, and medium of your content to determine whether your focus should be on readability or style. Use that focus to guide your font choices, ensuring that your text communicates effectively. Whenever you look at some text on a page, your eye has to start somewhere. On a page like the one above, your eye will subconsciously jump to the text that is bigger, bolder, and more unique.

UniversiTTy: Lesson 8. Designing Basic Latin Characters. Uppercase characters

As a business owner, you might have already defined the brand voice that helps you build a strong connection with your consumers. So, understanding the message each font conveys will make the process of choosing fonts easier for you. Choosing the perfect brand fonts for your company is as important as choosing brand colors. They establish visual hierarchy, create harmony and set the overall tone of your brand. To understand how to choose a font for your logo or brand design, you must first determine the purpose this font will fulfill in your project and the idea you want it to emphasize.

  • Or perhaps your project requires not only one or two, but multiple fonts?
  • If the message is serious, the font should also be serious, and vice versa.
  • I’m actually combining three different groups here (Geometric, Realist and Grotesk), but there is enough in common between these groups that we can think of them as one entity for now.
  • Play with size and weight to emphasize some text and de-emphasize other text.

This is the traditional choice for book typography, but it also works well on-screen. Old Style or Transitional serif fonts like EB Garamond or Libre Baskerville, tend to be easy on the eyes for longer reading like news and magazine articles. While it’s possible to use a Humanist sans serif font for long stretches of body text, the safer bet is a familiar serif design that readers can process quickly. When hunting down a font for your project, try out a combination of script, serif and sans serif fonts to create a balanced design. Or, to create a bold sense of contrast, check out these dynamic font duos. Some large font families even include both serif and sans serif versions, which offers even more flexibility to the designer.

Understanding the fundamentals of type and how to choose the best typeface pairings can improve your designs dramatically. When we combine multiple typefaces on a design, we want them to coexist comfortably — we don’t want to distract the viewer with the question, are these the same or not? We can start by avoiding two different faces from within one of the five categories that we listed above all together — two geometric sans, say Franklin and Helvetica. While not exactly alike, these two are also not sufficiently different and therefore put our layout in that dreaded neither-here-nor-there place. As you can see, varying the font size and weight of a single font creates visual hierarchy. When combined with great font pairing, these tools will help you create the visual structure you need to make a clear, communicative infographic.

how to choose fonts

Choose typefaces that support a wide range of characters, accents, and special symbols required by various languages. Also, be mindful of reading direction (left-to-right or right-to-left) and ensure your design accommodates these differences. Mixing a serif with a sans-serif typeface is standard practice, as it can balance formality and modernity. Consider the weight, width, and x-height to ensure cohesion between the paired typefaces. We explore website typography for UX design, including correct terminology, the basics, and advanced techniques designers can use to improve design decisions. While breaking design rules can result in some incredibly creative outcomes, it’s important to do so with intention.

UXPin gives designers the tools and features to go from concept to wireframing and mockup to interactive prototyping faster and with higher fidelity than any other design tool. Designing typography that works well with screen readers and other assistive technologies is crucial for users with visual impairments or cognitive disabilities. For example, Google Fonts offers a wide selection of open-source fonts, such as Montserrat and Raleway, free for personal and commercial projects.

how to choose fonts

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