In the digital world, everything is designed for a purpose. Every aspect of a digital design is decided after thorough brainstorming.

When it comes to website design, we usually undermine the importance of typography. Fonts have a huge impact on our subconscious mind. The effects are subtle but intense enough to affect our behavior.

Now, the question is: how to choose the best website fonts for your web design?

If the website copy is the message, typography is the tone in which we deliver that message. Robert Bringhurst, a famous Canadian typographer, in his book The Elements of Typography, says:

Typography is the craft of endowing human language with a durable visual form.

In website design, a font has three purposes:

Aesthetically Appealing

Fonts always compliment the overall design. Without appealing fonts, the design layout doesn’t shine and looks incomplete. Typography is the tool to impress your user with your hooking design sense. A user comes to a website to read your offerings, and if the font selection is on point, you have done your job as a designer.

Readability

The basic functionality of the font is that it needs to be sharp and clear. It is crucial to choose digital-friendly fonts. Professionals recommend using sans-serif fonts as they are considered digital-friendly fonts. Also, always select a color in contrast with the background to make it pop out.

Expressing the Tone

Fonts give your website a character. By choosing a font, you are deciding the tone you are going to convey your marketing message. While describing the true meaning of typography, Mia Cinelli, an Assistant Professor of Art Studio and Digital Design at The University of Kentucky, says:

All typefaces are designed to say something specific, and so when something is typed in a typeface, then what is said is influenced by how it is set. I call this a kind of Visual Inflection.

Why Choosing The Right Fonts Is So Critical?

Fonts add to the harmony of the design, and at the same time, they are crucial to delivering a clear message to the viewer. In other words, fonts are equally important for functionality and the aesthetics of a website.

Here are the reasons why:

Fonts Create Hierarchy

Not every information displayed on the screen is of equal importance. As a marketer, you want the public to notice some information at first glance, which will grab their attention.

Fonts can help in establishing the sequence in which you want your audience to read your displayed message. By using different techniques like increasing or decreasing the size, using different colors to make the text pop, and by playing with the thickness of the fonts, a designer can easily create hierarchy in the web layout.

Helps Formatting Text

The text displayed on the screen has a different part:

• Headlines
• Paragraphs
• New Offers
• Buttons
• CTAs

All these elements need to be properly formatted to give a balanced look at the entire design structure. Uneven text placement can destroy the aesthetic of the entire page, making the user confused.

Designers use fonts to deal with all these issues. All the text that is appealing is made more visible by making it stand out. This is also important because people don’t read the entire thing; they usually skim through the information. David Ogilvy, one of the best copywriters of the 20th century, said:

On average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.

You need to focus on the salient features of the text and make it even more appealing. Users may end up reading more if you can attract them with your headline.

Enhance Design Appeal

Text is the main component of a website design layout. A single web page contains hundreds of words, which means you have thousands of characters to place on the canvas.

The font selection has the power to make or break a website’s design interface. A designer needs to have enough exposure because using aesthetically appealing fonts is no easy task.

Here are some of the tricks designers use to come up with appealing compositions just by using text:

• Size: Not only does it create hierarchy, but it is also a necessary ingredient to add appeal to the design. The size makes a design look more visible, dominant, and memorable. Playing with the size of your text will make it more appealing and enticing for the viewers.

  Spacing is another technique to add charm to your typography. It gives a sense of balance to the entire design structure. However, be careful, or it can make your web layout look asymmetrical. You can play with spacing, but the gap between different parts of the text needs to be set carefully.

• Density: Like the size, bold fonts also pop up from the text, making it more visible. Bold text also enforces the message displayed. It adds a sense of trust and strength to the marketing message.
• Placement: How the text is displayed on the screen also enhances the attractiveness of the design. However, only try it if you are an expert; otherwise, you might end up overdoing it.
• Colors: Colors are the soul of every design. As they say, a vase with different colored flowers looks more attractive; similarly, you need to decide on a color palette for your website and stick to it.

Provide Consistency between Pages

The best website fonts give character to your web design and add harmony between different pages. The font theme needs to be consistent throughout the website, or else it will look aesthetically unappealing.

You need to set a fixed font size for different elements of your text. For example, if you have set 24px for your headline text, continue using it throughout your website; this will help the users identify which type of content they are reading.

Understanding the Art of Font Manipulation

A renowned British type designer, Matthew Carter, says:

Type is a beautiful group of letters, not a group of beautiful letters.

Font selection is much more than selecting enticing typefaces. It is the process of handpicking perfect fonts, that when put together, give a unique character.

Designers often manipulate the default settings of fonts to further personalize according to the website’s content. There are multiple techniques that designers keep in their toolboxes to make their work look more appealing and expressive.

Kerning

The process of adjusting space between two specific characters is termed as kerning. It is carefully adjusted and may vary depending on the characters. To add character to the text, designers can change the default settings to tailor the design according to the nature of the business. For example, let’s suppose we are opening up a warehouse facility named ‘Space’. Now the designer can increase the kerning value to add the volume to the text. It will reinforce the brand message.

Tracking

Tracking, also known as character spacing, is the overall spacing between characters. Most of the design software, like Photoshop, has this option and it’s widely used by graphic designers to stylize their text. Mostly this effect is used to add a sense of space and volume.

This technique is only applicable to short forms of copy; applying it on lengthy body copies will make the design layout unreadable.

Leading

The space between the lines is called leading. The term was coined back in the days when the gap between lines was adjusted manually using lead strips. Like tracking, leading can be adjusted in design software.

Setting up a correct value for leading is crucial; otherwise, you may end up with intersecting lines of text, making the entire thing unreadable. Too much space between lines can also confuse the readers, as it hinders the entire formatting.

Hierarchy

As discussed earlier, the hierarchy dictates the focus of viewers. It is the widely used method to increase emphasis on crucial parts of the text. In other words, it is like a map that navigates viewers’ eyes.

Setting up a hierarchy is easy; you need to make the selected text stand out from the rest. You can achieve this feat by:

• Increasing the size of the text
• Making it bold
• By giving it a different color
• By placing it at the top
• Highlighting it

Scaling

Scaling is the oldest trick in the design book, which is still used in the modern digital world. Designers use scaling when they want to make a design element look dominant or small. It is used to increase the clarity of the text. Many designers like to scale up the font size to elevate the design appeal.

Composition

Text composition is the deciding factor that will make your web design shine. Choosing attractive fonts always does not guarantee an appealing layout; the harmony of the entire composition is the one that does. Therefore, the real MVP in typography is the overall font composition. It is up to the designers to come up with a text layout that perfectly aligns with the brand identity.

A composition considered as the epitome of aesthetics is the one that is aligned, arranged, and compiled in harmony.

Text Manipulation

In the modern design world, graphic designers are turning towards minimalism. As the art form is advancing, digital artists are coming up with innovation now and then. Text manipulation is one of these interesting and unique methods in which designers are creating logos, visual messages, and other digital content by manipulating the text such that it resonates with the functionality of the thing or the idea it is representing.

Let’s Have Look at Different Categories of Fonts

The digital design industry has evolved. There was a time where we had limited fonts, but now, we have thousands of fonts to choose from.

Designers enjoy the creative freedom of selecting the best website fonts from a vast collection of typefaces. However, all these fonts belong to three major font groups:

Serif

Serif s are traditional fonts that give a classic look to a web layout. Many news websites use this font because it is also considered to have a formal tone. Expert typographers also suggest that this font makes your website look credible and trustworthy. Some of the feelings associated with these fonts are:

• Respect
• Authority
• Credibility
• Formality

San Serif

San serif is the modern cousin of the serif fonts. They are popular in the tech industry because of their modern, sleek, and sharp look. They are also considered more digital-friendly. Some of the feelings associated with these fonts are:

• Trust
• Sophistication
• Tech-savvy
• Modern

Script

Script fonts are known to elevate the elegance of the design layout because they mimic human handwriting. These fonts are recommended when you want to personalize your message. These fonts are popular among lifestyle-related industries. Script fonts express:

• Elegance
• Grace
• Happiness
• Creativity
• personal

Wrapping It Up!

In a nutshell, fonts fuel the modern website design. Take them seriously. Appealing fonts separate a professional website from an amateur looking one. Therefore, always choose the best website fonts to make your digital asset stand out.

A website developer needs to understand that fonts give character, consistency, and clarity to a website. Fonts that lack the tone will never be able to communicate your message across your target audience.

Always remember: the right fonts are capable of translating human feelings into text without losing the emotional touch. The art of knowing which fonts will better suit the website is like speaking the same language with different dialects.

In this modern era, consumers have evolved and can’t be easily impressed. There are millions of options available online if you want to attract the masses, you need to put in the effort and do whatever it takes to stand out from the rest. You need to entice the consumer through digital aesthetics. And the only way to touch a consumers’ soul is by mastering the art of font selection.