For all of you that missed Kyle’s website design post, you can find it here.
Choosing the right font for your website matters. Most websites today use a Sans-Serif font mainly as this is easier to read on screen. There is:
- Serif
Fonts like Times New Roman that have little extra parts added to them (known as serifs) – these are hard to read on size due to the serifs - Sans-Serif
Similar to serif but it removes the serifs from the font. Fonts are like Arial & Verdana. These are more easy to read on a screen even at a smaller font size. - Monospace
These are fonts like Courier that have a set width/height no matter what letter they are which are mainly used for a code view. - Cursive
These fonts are like hand writing – the letters flow together and join up with each other – so hard to read at a small font size. - Fantasy/Script
Symbols or other decorative properties tend to appear with these fonts so similarly to Cursive fonts, it can become harder to read at a smaller size.
Most websites use a base font that is normally easily readable – typically a sans-serif as it doesn’t contain serifs. This doesn’t mean that your stuck with having to use a boring font on your website. They are some websites that use a serif font which works as they space the lettering out so it makes it easier to read.
Using a none standard web font can cause issues on websites with browser compatibility. The font has to be installed on the visitors computer to view the same font you have on the site. Nearly all computers have Arial/Verdana which is why it is used so much throughout the web. There are many ways to overcome this issue if you wished to use a different font…
You have a limited choice of things you could do however if you wanted to have a none web standard font display on your website. One of the most popular methods is to save the text as an image. This can cause issues later on if the user has images disabled. Until more recently you could only really use images to use fancy fonts on your website, but now there is alternative methods to do this:
- Use flash to replace (sIFR) the text within flash to give you a fancy font for all visitors
- Some website services offer a pay to use service so you can link to a fancy font and use it on your site
- CSS3 has became popular for allowing web designers/developers to include custom fonts on the web
- Google has released a new Font API that will allow you to use their services for free to use custom fonts on your website.
Once you have decided on which font to use you need to choose a font for your website/business name. If you don’t already have a logo then choosing the right font is need important consideration as customers will potentially remember your website by the style of your website/business name.
A lot of big name websites use only a font for a logo e.g. Google, Yahoo!, Ebay and even Amazon!
Choosing the correct font and colours can make your website perform better!
Great post mate, well laid out. Could also be worth pointing out that ‘sans-serif’ is so called because ‘sans’ is French for ‘without’ so sans-serif is ‘without serifs’.