That makes it a great choice when customers need to use very fine print. The most common criticism of Helvetica is that it lacks character. The runner up on our list is also a sans serif font.
However, it has more character than Helvetica. The set-width is tighter, and the letter shapes are rounder and more creative. Microsoft designed Calibri, and it's now the default font in Microsoft Office. Our next example is another classic sans serif font. Sans serif fonts are in fashion today because they reflect the mood of our post-modern era.
Futura is the best-known geometric font in use today. Its characters are all drawn from the circle, the square or the triangle.
If your customer wants readers to see it as ultramodern or futuristic, this is the accepted choice to make. Garamond is the first serif font on our list.
Garamond is best known as a typeface for book publishing. You can use it whenever you want to convey a sense of classical taste and refinement. The best-known serif font in the world has dipped just below Garamond in popularity recently.
The Times of London commissioned the font in It used the typeface for forty years. Readers will always associate it with journalism and publishers use it for books and general printing every day. Its reputation makes it the perfect font for brands who want to convey a solid, reliable image.
We're often impressed by the skill with which wine stewards in fine restaurants match the perfect wines to our meal choices. There's a trade secret behind that skill. Roboto is one of many typefaces that can be used at both large and small sizes effectively. Fonts that are perfect for use on the web might not translate well to use in print, and vice versa. But for fonts that might be used over multiple projects, designers should make sure the font will work in every medium in which it may be used.
If the message is serious, the font should also be serious, and vice versa. The wrong font can completely derail the message a brand is trying to send. A font like Crimson Text would work much better. Readability is arguably the most important feature of a typeface.
Legibility refers to how easy it is to distinguish letterforms within a font. Readability takes that one step further and refers to how easily different words can be distinguished and read. Readability and legibility can both be impacted dramatically by the size of the font being used. A font that looks great at 18 pixels might be illegible at 10 pixels. Font size has a significant impact on the readability of fonts.
Not every website or design project will be translated into multiple languages. Not all typefaces support special characters like those that are accented , let alone alphabets like Cyrillic and Greek. Support for multiple languages may be important when choosing a typeface for some projects.
There are four basic fonts styles: serif, sans serif, display, and script. Serif fonts are often viewed as more traditional and formal though not all are. Sans serif typefaces can be seen as more modern and minimalist.
Display fonts are unsuitable for use at small sizes, but their appearance varies widely. Script fonts resemble handwriting or calligraphy. Both script and display fonts are used primarily for short blocks of text or things like headlines and titles.
For readability, serif fonts were once viewed as more reader-friendly in print, while sans serif fonts as more reader-friendly on screen. But most modern typefaces in both styles can work well in either medium, especially with advances in screen resolutions. Deciding this narrows down the font choices for a designer, which can make settling on a final selection easier.
Obachan uses both serif and sans serif fonts throughout their website. Every brand has a mood and a message. Narrowing down typeface choices based on brand suitability can start with making a list of keywords that represent the brand. From there, designers can search for fonts that include those keywords or synonyms. For example, if a brand is formal and traditional, a font like Garamond or Caslon would be a good fit.
If a brand is modern and cutting edge, the designer might choose something like Roboto or Raleway. While many fonts have general licenses that allow for use in virtually any situation, others do not.
Some licenses only allow for use in one medium or another. Others allow for use in promotional materials but might now allow for use on a product being sold. Another consideration is that if multiple designers are working on a single project, they might each need a licensed version of the font.
Not all fonts play well with others. Some typefaces are neutral enough that they can be paired with hundreds of other fonts. In fact, there are a ton of bad typefaces out there that are boring, illegible and just plain ugly. Even though they can look vastly different from each other, the best typefaces have a lot of the same things in common. These include:. Kerning is the space between two characters.
Too little space, and the font is unreadable because the letters are smushed together. Uneven amount of space from letter to letter? It just looks awkward and ugly. Futura and Helvetica are two examples of fonts that are very easy to read because of their even kerning—whether the letters are bold or skinny, their arrangement gives the reader the sense of clean spacing. Consistency means all the letters, numbers and any other characters used maintain the same look.
Didot is an excellent font that uses dramatic variations between thick and thin strokes while still managing to maintain balance. Bodoni is another famous example of a well-balanced font with its strong, solid vertical strokes and lighter arches and curves. Its serifs add a small bit of classy flair that also feels like counterweights keeping the letters upright. And lastly, a font must be legible. If you need text that small, choose a font that works at that size.
Sans serifs are particularly good at maintaining legibility no matter the context: hence the endurance of fonts like Helvetica. There are lots of ways a font can be bad. Many popular fonts have been overused to exhaustion. Brush Script was hugely popular from the s to the s, to the point that it still feels stale and overused today. Other overused, retro fonts you should probably stay away from? FF Blur and Trajan Pro. The worst fonts are imbalanced, which makes them seem ugly. Another famously unpopular, ugly font, Bleeding Cowboys, is disliked by designers because of how busy and unpredictable it is.
Random fading on the letters? And then there are the fonts that are just dull, which makes them a bad font choice. Although there are cases where an unimposing font is exactly what you need, there are plenty of good fonts that can deliver personality while fading to the background see the best fonts section below.
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