Choosing a typeface for your app
Choosing font scheme for our website or application is just as important as choosing a color scheme. Choosing the combination of types helps convey moods and makes for a better user experience. Choosing the right combination of fonts will make for a better user experience by making it more readable and convey the moods we want.
There are two categories of fonts in use today, serif and sans serif. Serif fonts are notable by the use of feet. The feet aren't decorative, it harks back to the days of stone carvings since it was difficult to cut out right angles in stone. Serif fonts look more traditional and give off a more serious tone. San Serifs are more modern and don't have the feet. In this article, we will look at the different families in the two categories.
Serif fonts have four families: old style, traditional, modern and slab. The old style is an older font, followed by transitional, modern and slab. We can differentiate between the families by comparing the thickest part of the letter with the thinnest part of the letter. As we get more modern, the size differences increase. The exception to the rule is slab. Slab was created for newspapers where poor paper quality would bleed. It allowed the letters to be read even with ink bleed. There is almost no difference between thickest and thinnest part of the letter and is more uniform.
San Serif fonts look more modern to our eyes and like the serif fonts, are broken down into four families. The families are grotesque, neo grotesque, humanist and geometric. Similar to the serif fonts, the more modern the family, the more pronounced the difference between the thinnest and thickest part of the letter. Again, just like serif fonts, there is an outlier. That outlier is the geometric font. There is no modulation and the letter o is a circle.
Choosing a font involves considering three aspects; mood, era and weight. The correct combination of these three things will greatly increase the readability and usability of our website or app. Here are some basic rules to follow. Limit the types of fonts to two or three maximum. Mix serif and non serifs as the combination looks more pleasing for most of us. Keep the eras of the fonts similar to avoid confusion. and finally, use different weights or boldness to create contrast.