Don’t Use Weird Fonts
- Author: Nicky
- Filed under: Bad Idea, Web Copy, Web Design
Apr 4,2008
This is one of my little pet peevs, a bugbear, gets my goat sort of thing. People fall in love with some fonts, and then want to use them for everything. Some fonts were just not made for web pages though.
Have you ever sent a word document to someone and then saw it on their computer and it doesn’t look quite the same? The reason is often because they don’t have the same fonts installed as you do. The same applies to web pages, if the visitor doesn’t have the font installed, they will see it differently.
For the main text of your website use Verdana, Arial or Georgia.
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2 Responses for "Don’t Use Weird Fonts"
While we’re on the topic of font choice peeves, one of the golden rules of Typography is to limit your fonts to 1 or 2 different types. With all of the wonderful whacky fonts out there to choose from some people find it hard to limit themselves to just ONE simple, clean and functional font.
With the increased popularity of blogs and the freedom to ‘customise’ your own web page people are using Arial one day, Verdana on Tuesdays and Times the next. This makes your website look unprofessional, unbalanced and messy.
Pick a font and STICK TO IT. If you just can’t let go of that bubble font use it to make your kid’s birthday invitation instead.
Helvetica, Trebuchet MS and Garamond should be safe bets, too.
Fonts can be “degraded”, of course, so if a font will be installed on *many* but not *all* computers (e.g. Calibri), you can specify that as your main font, and a more widespread option as a fallback.
Just ensure your fallback font looks pixel perfect, too.
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