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Typography and Website Design - Fonts
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Typography on the WebFontsTypography is the appearance, style, and arrangement of text; a very important aspect of your web site. If visitors have difficulty reading the content, they won't use your site.If you are creating a strictly personal website with a restricted audience, then you have more leeway in the typography of your site. For those creating a business web site, or an informational site that will hopefully attract a lot of visitors, there are a number of things you need to keep in mind. |
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Appearance and ReadabilityWe all know that a serif font, such as Times New Roman, is recommended for business correspondence. The "hats and feet" on the letters make text easier to read on a printed page. On the web, the opposite is true.Serif fontsWith a serif font the letters tend to run together when viewed on an electronic display. This can make it difficult for your visitors to skim through your body copy (i.e. content) and locate the information that they are seeking. See the graphic example below.
Sans-serif fontsOn the other hand a sans-serif (no hats and feet) font, such as Verdana, is much easier to read and makes a web page look cleaner and less cluttered. Using a sans-serif font makes it much easier, for the visitor to your website, to read or scan your website content and body copy for the information they are looking for.Note:Times New Roman is the default text on web pages, so you will need to specify the font you want to use when you set-up your web pages.Core FontsFor the bulk of the text or body copy on your web pages, use a common font or core font. These core fonts are installed on most computer systems. See the examples below:•  Arial - (sans-serif font) often used on web pages•  Comic Sans - (serif font)•  Courier - (serif font)•  Georgia - (serif font)•  Impact - (sans-serif font) often used for headlines on the web•  Trebuchet MS - (sans-serif font)•  Tahoma - (sans-serif font)•  Times New Roman - (serif font) commonly used for printed materials•  Verdana - (sans-serif font) commonly used for web pagesWhat fonts are right for your website?Are these core fonts the ONLY ones you can use? No. If you are creating a web site for an intranet, you can use any font installed on your computer as everyone with access to the site will have the same font list.For the Internet, there are many other fonts that are fairly common. (However, if you want everyone to view your pages as you designed them, it is still safest to use the core fonts.) |
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Using graphic fontsYou can use any font you want for titles, logos or headings ... IF you create them as graphics. That way, everyone will see the font correctly regardless of what they have on their system.Of course, the other side of that coin, is that the more graphics you have, the slower your pages will load. This can work against you if it causes visitors to give up and leave your website. Note:Don't use several different fonts on your web site. One sans-serif and one serif font, with all the variations of bold, italic and color, is more than enough to allow for freedom of design. |
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