Typography 101: How to choose a font?

The Serif and the Sans-Serif

Fonts are usually divided into two families:

1. Serif
2. Sans-Serif

You might’ve heard about them before, even used them while designing a software or using a text editor. But, how do these differ?

Serif based fonts tend to be really old fashioned and conservative. You can recognise them by observing their usually ‘etched’ ends. Copperplate and Georgia are examples of the Serif font family.

Sans-Serif on the other hand are on the modern side of the typography. These fonts lack the ‘etching’ that the Serif fonts have. Futura and Helvetica are examples of the Sans-Serif font family.

So, what font(s) should I use?

Just like everything in design theory, it depends on the use-case. Usually, designers use Serif fonts when they want to convey something traditional and Sans-Serif fonts when they want to modernise things. But they never limit themselves to just 1 font, actually that’s the creative part. Combining multiple fonts is also an art. Medium is combining fonts right now, on this very page. Look closely, the headings are in Sans-Serif and rest of the content is Serif.

Combining the fonts

You should always experiment and find out what works best for you but there are a few important rules you should know:

1. Similar typeface for heading and paragraph don’t go well.
2. Heading written in Serif and paragraph written in Sans-Serif work very well together and vice-versa.
3. Be careful, if you are using more than 3 fonts on your website/app.( I hope you know what you’re doing 👾)
4. Don’t mix era’s and moods. Try keeping timelines of your fonts similar.
5. Try finding similarity/contrast between these factors when combining two fonts: mood, era, weight and serif-ness

And stay away from these fonts:

1. Kristen
2. Comic-Sans
3. Papyrus
4. Curlz
5. Viner

They never work out, no matter what we try.

Here are some more good resources for you.

Tools I use daily to find fonts

Choosing the right font

5 principles of font selection

That’s all folks.

I hope you learned something about fonts today. If yes? then, why not share it with your friends? Hit that share button and show some love.

Happy Coding.