Web Fonts – Interesting Typography Is Not Just For Print

A wonderful web design is about much more than content; visitors to any website are affected psychologically by what they see and typography is just as important as layout and image when it comes to invoking positive feelings from your visitors.

A set of conclusions about the company will be reached within seconds of a visitor laying eyes on your landing page…and your web fonts used/typograpy is a huge part of your design so it’s vital to think this aspect through very carefully when you’re putting a website together.

Technology has broadened choice
Back in the early days of the net, there were very few typographic choices for designers. Only certain fonts worked with the internet and until the advent of CSS3 there were only around 15 choices. This was hugely limiting in terms of the messages which designers were able to send out via the fonts they chose. Hundreds of years of being exposed to printed material has ensured that the public have certain reactions to specific fonts…they make assumptions about printed information based on not only colour and image but on font.

For example, serif fonts (the kind with feet such as Times New Roman) are often associated with serious content; news, scholarly articles and legal matters, whilst documents using sans serif (without feet) fonts will be thought of as containing more modern and less serious subjects.

This simple use of association is very useful for industries of all kinds because what you want to convey can be partly brought about in an instant; scientific or technological industries will usually employ sans serif fonts, whilst more traditional businesses might use serif to convey a feeling of seriousness or reliability.

When considering the bulk of your text on any website, it’s very important to look at readability; certain fonts are far easier on the eye than others; Verdana and Arial are both easy to read due to their clean lines; they look good printed as well as on screen so many websites employ them.

We hear a lot about “space” in relation to web design and indeed, the space employed on a site has a huge impact on a user’s comfort; too much space and the site is strange to look at, too little and it’s confusing. Font can help you gain the perfect balance between space and text as well as affect your visitors and instantly send them messages about what sort of business you are.

Remember that when someone clicks onto your site, they view the page as a whole; their eye will scan the content briefly before they decide whether or not to stick around; one jagged looking detail within the site could well convince them to hit the back button…and you don’t want that. Convince your visitors to stay by creating a visually pleasing site where image, text, colour and font all work together to create a sense of trust.