Helvetica, for example, is clean, crisp and neutral. Fonts can have quite distinct personalities. Take into account the intended audience, your own brand identity and the surrounding colour and design. Give some thought to the impression you want to give (and if you’re in any doubt about the impact a font can have, take a quick scroll through these typographical posters). Generally, serif typefaces appear more traditional, and sans serif typefaces look more modern. People can have very different opinions on what ‘looks right’, so there are few hard rules. The final decision is a matter of judging which one looks most suitable for your message.
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Font availability varies depending on your software and whether you’re using a PC or a Mac, so for comprehensive lists, see Will Harris’s list of font pairs and Douglas Bonneville’s 19 top fonts in 19 combinations.
For print, if you’re fed up with Times New Roman, try Garamond for the body text and contrasting it with Frutiger or Futura for the headlines. Or you could try Helvetica for the body and Century Schoolbook for headings. Try to use fonts with similar proportions.įor something that will be read online, the default safe option is Arial for the body text and Times New Roman for the headline. When pairing fonts, have a quick look at the proportion of the ascenders and descenders (the tails on your ds and ps, for example) in relation to the letters as a whole. For variation, use different weights or styles within the same family. As a general rule, don’t use more than two fonts on a page, unless you’re confident you have good reason. But fonts from the same ‘family’, such as Lucida Sans and Lucida Bright, also often work well together. A good rule of thumb is to use serif for headlines if the body text is in sans serif, and vice versa. For now, though, it remains.įonts often look their best when paired in a complementary fashion, where one is used for headlines and another for body text.
It’s worth noting that as the quality and resolution of computer screens increases, this distinction is likely to fade. (By which we mean that you have justification for it, not that it fits snugly to both sides of the page.) If you’re using one as a conscious style choice, go for it – just be sure it’s justified. Likewise, people don’t expect to read newspaper-style fonts online. Hand someone a 50-page report in a sans serif font, and the unfamiliarity of it may well strike a blow. Reader expectation, however, does have an impact on readability. As user experience consultant Alex Poole says, ‘if there is a difference, it is too small to worry about’. Ask a graphic designer or an editor, and they’re almost certain to give you their personal opinion one way or the other, but studies into readability generally find little or no difference. So are serif fonts more readable than sans serif, or vice versa? In a word, no. However, some serif fonts, such as Georgia, have been specifically designed to display well even on low-resolution screens (and you can see it in action on the New York Times website). Serif fonts aren’t usually used for text intended to be read on screen because on lower-resolution screens the serifs can look fuzzy and inhibit readability. In fact, it’s so traditional to use serif for printed material that using sans serif can be a statement of modernity or even (small) rebellion. However, as the eye doesn’t travel in a smooth line when reading, but in quick jumps known as ‘saccades’, this argument is questionable. The generally accepted wisdom is that serifed typefaces are better for printed material, because the serifs guide the reader’s eye along the line. They’re usually used online, but are becoming increasingly acceptable in printed materials. Arial, Helvetica and Verdana are the most common. Examples include Times New Roman, Garamond and Bookman Old Style.įonts that lack these small projecting features are called sans serif (from the French for ‘without’, but usually pronounced ‘sanns’ by printers).
Those with small projecting features are known as serifs. For those of us who don’t deal in fonts every day, the number of fonts on offer can seem overwhelming – but it doesn’t have to be.įonts generally fall into two categories – serif and sans serif.
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