Fonts and typography provide an opportunity for your website to be expressive, visually engaging to your visitors, and representative of your brand’s image and styling. Visual content on the web appears in a variety of different styles. From motion graphics and video, to pictures and interactive maps, there are lots of unique opportunities to display images. However we can’t disregard the power of good ol’ fashioned text as the primary method for getting the message of your content across. Finding the right font for your site and brand is more important than you might think, especially if the idea of navigating the world of fonts is a foreign concept. It can considers as surprisingly tricky, but hopefully this quick guide can serve as a good place to start.

Web developers are typically fans of system fonts. They like them because they display consistently across different browsers and computers and minimize confusion when coding for various users throughout the web. Their cohesiveness and clarity makes them a reliable option for both developers and users alike. If your website requires a font that is more expressive than trusty Arial, you will need to do some research through various font-hubs to find the right one for you and your company. You will have to initially evaluate whether or not you want to use a free font, or opt for a paid one instead. This requires a fundamental distinction to be made in which you and your business evaluate what is needed to meet your site’s needs. If you are going for a basic layout, then free fonts could be a cost-effective and logical option. Should your company be looking to stand out and distinguish itself a little more, a premium choice would probably be a better option.

On the contrary, there are plenty of other websites out there offering free font that could only be considered lackluster at best. Typefaces like these are often poorly designed, developed, and can actually come across as generally cheesy – not something you want for your brand’s logo or scattered throughout your marketing collateral. A font family refers to all of a the variations for a given font, This includes its style (roman and italic), serif-use, weight (thin, light, regular, book, semi bold, bold, extra bold, heavy and black), and horizontal scale (extended and condensed). Without the full font family at your disposal, your design options will be significantly limited, especially when creating marketing collateral that often calls for different font variety. You might want to have the most options possible when working with a specific font for your brand.

Paid fonts are, without a doubt, a superior option to free fonts. These are created by professional typographers and designers with the intention of selling their font to anyone who wants permission to use them. As a result, paid fonts are of a much higher standard and quality, and they deliver the entire range of options that should come with a full font family. Many also provide fonts that work on multiple browsers and platforms, and are compatible with different languages as well.