Have you ever come across a website with a font style that you could just not read? Believe it or not, some professional – as well as personal – websites utilize hard to read fonts that should never be used in web design. While there are plenty of fonts that look nice for different projects, there are some popular web fonts to keep in mind when creating a page. These popular web fonts are easy to read and complement a range of websites:
- Helvetica
- PT Serif
- Georgia
- Arial
- Verdana
- Tahoma
- Times New Roman
- Fedra Sans
- Adobe Caslon
- Courier
Choosing a Font
When it comes to selecting a font for a website, there are some things to take into consideration. Readability should be the number one concern when selecting a font type – in fact, choosing one that is too hard to read will prompt many visitors to leave a website! There is more that goes into choosing a font than the style of the typography alone – how does the font look when it’s minimized or maximized? If your visitor needs to increase or decrease the font for readability, it needs to be easy to scan and be gentle on the eyes.
Another thing to consider when choosing a font for a website is a complementary style – using the same font for all the text on a page ends up looking boring and basic. For this reason, many web designers use two typefaces – one for the body copy and another one for headlines. Keeping the body copy simple and easy to read is essential, but there is a bit more freedom when it comes to the headlines. Use the headlines or eye-catching words to get creative or use a fancier font. No matter which fonts style you select, they should always pair together well on the website.
The size of the font is also important. The default size of body copy is 12px – so be sure to use 14px or 16px for the accenting or headline copy, just so they are different enough in size to be noticeable. It’s up to the web designer on what size font to use, but it’s vital that it’s easy to read and shouldn’t be any larger than it needs to be – unless that’s what you want on your website!