Content For Web Site Design

Font Pairing Tips for Website Designers

Choose Fonts that work well together

Font pairing simply means picking fonts that go well together and it’s a very important step in effective website design. The right choice of fonts can help information to easily flow on your website and give you a visually appealing design. Furthermore, the right fonts can make your content more presentable, readable and professional.

With that said, we’ll show you how to choose two fonts that work well together and will contribute to making your design look the part.

Why is it important for fonts to look great together?

Your website design company Toronto may ask you to give information on what fonts to be used on the site depending on your brand. This is because they know too well how fonts can make or break a site’s design. Fonts that don’t work well together can break the overall web page design. To start with, the fonts will distract the user and make it harder for users to read the content. Sometimes the poor choice of fonts can make them compete with each other and overwhelm the readers. The right choice of fonts can make the important information on a page to stand out. For instance, you can choose a different font for your headings and another for the body copy but ensure they both work together to give you a cohesive design.

The 4 main types of fonts

Before we get to the part where we discuss the website design fonts that work well together, let’s start by talking about the different types of font available on the web.

Script: This font type is considered fancy with letters linking to each other.
Serif: This font type is said to have the smallest feet (embellishments) at the very end of each letter stroke.
Sans Serif: This font type doesn’t have feet or embellishments at the end of the letter strokes which is why it’s called Sans Serif (“no feet”).
Decorative: This is a less professional font type that is often used on signages and headlines.

Choose contrasting fonts

One thing to remember when pairing fonts is making sure they contrast with each other instead of competing with each other. For instance, if you choose two decorative fonts on the same page, they end up competing with each other. You can go for one decorative and a Serif font which contract with each other. Avoid fonts that are too similar. You can even create a hierarchy by using bold and italics if the fonts appear too similar.

Choose a diverse font family

If you want to easily find a number of fonts that work well together, choose a font family that has different versions of the same font. For instance, you can find a font type such as Segoe that is available in Serif, Sans Serif, bold and italic versions. This means you don’t have to do all the work of selecting different fonts and pairing them together. You already have options from that font family that you could use.

Avoid using more than 3 fonts

Every font you choose on a page brings its own unique personality. When you use too many fonts on the same design, you end up overwhelming the users because they’re all competing for attention. As a rule of thumb, use two to three fonts maximum in a design. This helps to keep it simple and avoid creating chaos.

Proper kerning is key

Kerning simply refers to the spacing between the letters in a word that is typed out. Some fonts will even appear better when you add a bit more space between the letters. However, there are fonts that generally don’t look well when you add space between the letters. Play around with different variations to see what would work well.

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