Finding a good font for your game is essential because cool fonts infuse your game with individuality. However, fonts unsuitable for games can seriously compromise the gaming experience. Perfect fonts don’t exist, but there are perfect use options when a font harmonizes exceptionally well with a project. Fonts quickly become outdated in the technical sense, so if a typeface hasn’t been updated in a long time, it’s likely inconvenient to use now.
Legibility refers to how easy it is to make out any given letter on a page. Sure, we all want to use fonts that make our infographics “pretty”, but there are many other important things going on behind the scenes. You probably don’t care about them, either, and honestly, I don’t blame you. We all have that one designer friend who won’t shut up about Comic Sans (if you aren’t aware of the universal hatred for Comic Sans, you can get caught up here).
Serif typefaces
Although there are many other choices that have been included on lists of terrible fonts, the following have shown up time and time again. Unprofessional and widely viewed as just plain terrible, they are not recommended for use in branding or business materials. For headers, logos and even taglines, all capitals can be perfectly acceptable. If you do use all caps on your headers, try to use them for shorter headlines. It should be mentioned that some fonts are designed in all caps, and therefore, cannot have sentence-case.
Choosing appropriate font sizes and enabling smooth scaling across different devices is essential for maintaining legibility and accessibility. For example, a sophisticated serif typeface like Playfair Display can help convey elegance and refinement for luxury brands. Fonts can have many different purposes, from communicating basic information to expressing a complex theme or emotion. That’s why iit’s important to have a clear understanding of what you want to achieve with your font choice, as well as who you’re trying to appeal to. Whatever your brief, ensure you’re clear on what your font needs to achieve, how it will be used, or what specific problem it needs to solve.
Consider an Extended Type Family
Medium-length text, defined loosely as three to four paragraphs, is actually pretty flexible which means you’ve got options. If you’re leaning toward a serif font, opt for something in the old style like Quattrocento, a transitional style like Libre Baskerville, or a slab serif like Arvo. Then the best choice would be something in the humanist or grotesque style like Cabin or Raleway, but even some geometric styles like Montserrat will work.
A typeface is a collection of fonts while a font refers to a specific style or weight within a typeface family. But Helvetica Bold is a specific font within the Helvetica typeface family. Here’s a visual example so you can see the difference between a typeface and fonts.
Use Stylish Fonts as Accents
The modern characteristics of the Sans Serif perfectly match the legibility and trustworthiness exuded by the Serif. We have already discussed Google Fonts, which is a massive library of open-source typefaces. They created Google Sans, a modified version of Product Sans choosing fonts for website in 2018. Furthermore, they use Roboto as the default font for Android and Chrome OS. You can find paid fonts from sources like Adobe Fonts, Linotype and Fonts.com. To make your target audience feel more personal with your brand, include script in your brand fonts.
Selecting typefaces with high legibility and readability is essential to ensure users can easily consume the content on your website. Legibility refers to the clarity of individual characters, while readability encompasses the overall ease of understanding the text. Typography significantly impacts a website’s user experience, readability, aesthetics, and accessibility.
Pragmatic Pixel Perfection: A Manifesto for Balancing Design Quality and Speed
Check out this fun article on 25 classic fonts that will last a whole design career. For example, if you’re designing a logo you’ll most likely modify one main font and maybe use a secondary typeface. For a website or an app, you’ll likely want to follow the same rule. Especially when designing for digital screens, legibility and accessibility are key to creating a good user experience.
Do you need a font for brand identity, logo, or another design element? Do you want the font to attract attention and place accents or be a neutral «workhorse» that mainly just communicates information? Or perhaps your project requires not only one or two, but multiple fonts? Choosing a font that includes characters for other languages, guarantees that the design of your site will remain consistent for a broader swath of your readership. This may sound like a losing battle, but there are plenty of font families that include multiscript support.
It’s very helpful to consider the design intent of the typeface. Many popular typefaces have detailed write-ups and reviews, so it’s really inexcusable to not know at least something about your choice. If a typeface was designed for signage, like Cooper Black, it probably isn’t going to work well set as the body copy of a book. That might be an obvious example, but don’t miss the subtleties in your own choices. Again, it only takes a few seconds to look something up, or flip open a decent typography book to get some basic facts, and you’ll be wiser for it. How your typeface is set, combined with the basic legibility of the typeface, yields a certain level of readability.
- Conversely, typefaces designed for novels or newspapers have very high legibility.
- An important part of the design process is research and inspiration.
- Many companies use this to invoke a fun feeling to relate to children or as a retro 1960s font, but there are better options to choose from.
- We have chosen Vollkorn as the title in the logo template above and Josefin Sans as the subheading to give the design a trustworthy vibe.
Typography is a subtle art, but less elusive than its reputation might suggest. If you’ve already given some thought to the organization of your project, its scope, and its audience, you’re primed to make smart typographic choices. That’s a matter of the font’s personality, but to some extent personality depends on familiarity. Another consideration is that if multiple designers are working on a single project, they might each need a licensed version of the font. Designers should be sure they understand the licensing of any fonts they’re considering using and what limitations those licenses might impose. For example, if a brand is formal and traditional, a font like Garamond or Caslon would be a good fit.
Create contrast with your second font
But even so, establishing visual hierarchy between those fonts is crucial. Learn more about font pairing to find the right typefaces that fit your brand personality. The logo template above features only one sans serif font Dosis. If you’re trying to make your brand stand out and stay ahead of the competition, include handwritten fonts in your list. Consider your marketing strategy, main message and target audience while choosing handwritten fonts.