Importance of Using Proper Fonts in Web Design

With the adoption of CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) in the domain of website design, a new era has started where the art of topography underwent complete transformation. Web designers are now enjoying more liberty while choosing fonts or typefaces, which was unthinkable before. Here in this article, we will discuss the suitability of various web design fonts for making it easier for the readers and visitors to select the best possible font that suit the purpose.

Before we start pinpointing the slight difference between various types of font, we have to comprehend the simple fact that the web design and printing are two different areas and therefore you can’t use the same font in them. Apart from discussing various facets of the common online fonts, we will highlight some new fonts as well.

Sans-serif Font
One of the most commonest and widely used fonts is Sans-serif. This font has non-structural elements and details on some symbols and letters. This font is widely used in body part of a website for its readability. Sans-serif font is used for giving prominence to texts. This font is used largely as header in website for seizing the attention of the visitors at the very first glance. However, a computer with low resolution will not be able to reap this advantage of Sans-serif font.

Some of the common Sans-serif fonts are Trebuchet MS, Verdana and Arial that can be available in Microsoft’s Core fonts for the Web. Arial is not ideal font to be used in the body section but it is used as header in most of the websites.

• Tahoma: If you are tired of using Arial or hesitant of using Helvetica, you can go for Tahoma. It has a different charm and can appeal to the viewers. It is easy to read as well.
• Verdana: This font is tailor-made for increasing readability. Verdana is ideal for body text because it can be read even at small size. Two of its conspicuous features are loose letter-spacing and wide proportions. But you should not use it as the header of your website otherwise; it will look unprepossessing.
• Trebuchet MS: The major advantage of this font is that it offers more characters than Verdana or Arial can offer. It can be used as body text but it is rarely used as heading.

Mac Font
Mac fonts are gaining enormous popularity for their smart and modern look. Lucida is a popular Mac Font, which was popularized by Apple. Mac OS X uses Lucida Grande font, another popular Mac Font, which has increased its popularity among the web designers. Lucida Sans Unicode is another Mac Font, which is commonly on Windows.

Century Gothic
This font a stylistic font that is far more attractive and impressive than its counter parts Mac and Sans-serif Font. This font is used widely in the short text or in the heading section. However, one should not use in the body section of a website, as it will mar its impact.

Serif fonts
Though serif fonts are not widely used in websites, you can use them if you want to add a traditional look in your website. This font will definitely help your website to stand out from the rest of the other websites. However, the major drawback of these fonts is its poor readability.

The two main serif fonts are Georgia and Times New Roman. There are some other popular alternatives of these two fonts. Palatino variants are used widely as a viable alternative of the two core Serif fonts.

In Fine
New fonts are being developed almost everyday. But before you use them in your website, you have to remain aware of the issue of suitability. We have mentioned some handpicked fonts used by leading website design company professionals. You can try a different font for standing out from the crowd but you should discard the vital issue of readability altogether.