When considering the best font for your website, look at the two most common options:
- Serif – they have cross-lines at the tips of each letter.
- Sans serif — no lines, they’re plain.
While studies show people read serif text faster in print, people actually read sans serif quicker onscreen.
Hence, the best fonts for your website content are probably Arial and Verdana.
Arial is modern and professional — always a safe bet with all ages. Meanwhile, Verdana is also modern and professional, but more stylish — perhaps making it more appealing to younger audiences.
Either way, keep your fonts and colours consistent, and try not to go smaller than 10 point. Otherwise you’ll strain users’ eyes and hinder usability. You can find all the leading fonts for the Web at Fonts.com.
Many designers look at web copy as something that gets in the way of beautiful designs. The fonts are shrunk in a bid to make them all but disappear. Don’t let this happen to your site.
Typographic quality has been evolving for hundreds of years, starting by hand, and then progressing to mechanical, machine, electric and electronic. But onscreen fonts still have a way to go.
High-gloss magazines boast more than 2,400 dots per inch (DPI). Meanwhile, current monitors display about 100 DPI. When monitors reach the typographic quality of paper, there’ll be more flexibility with fonts and sizes.
Until then, it’s a good bet to go with Arial or Verdana.
Useful info! Odd being a designer getting advice from a webwriting firm, but I’ll take it. Thanks
Really good and really interesting post. I expect (and other readers maybe :)) new useful posts from you!
Good luck and successes in blogging!
[...] issues, such as small, unreadable fonts, are certainly widespread on the Web. However, these problems should become less common as more web [...]
Great blog! What’s the exact font used for this website? Name, color, size and line spacing?
Look forward to your soonest response! Thanks!
[...] aside, these additional fonts obviously give users multiple options; and in a cyberworld overrun with Verdana and Arial text, a little variety goes a long [...]