It’s understandable why the adage “a picture is worth a thousand words” holds true. Images can immediately conjure up feelings of happiness, sadness, wonder, anger, and many more different types of emotions.
In web design, I began thinking about how much emphasis is usually put into images when one is considering a website or some type of print media. It made me realize how often underestimated the creative use of fonts and/or typeface can be. A beautiful calligraphy font – with it’s elegant brush strokes, whispy and often thin lines can illicit a feeling of elegance, creativity, and for many brands an image of luxury. While a sans-serif font such as Franklin Gothic conveys an image or emotion of directness and boldness. A step even further would be Impact; a SUPER BOLD font that has been used widely in print and online. Though Franklin Gothic is a good offline font, how does it translate being used on an entire website? Probably not so well (depending on the subject?).
In most design aspects it comes down to personal taste, but there are accepted rules and standards that can be used to convey your brand to an audience; especially in typography, font use, and font pairing. If given the opportunity to work with a designer that specializes in this design aspect, you can easily leave it in their hands to find a perfect font that works for… and with you!
When collaborating with clients, designers often find that 90 to 100 percent of the time clients leave design decisions up to their current designer or someone they have worked with previously. This is understandable as you are paying for someone’s valued expertise and quality product. This being said, how involved would you like to be in the creative process of your new or updated website? A good place to start is choosing a font that reflects your personality and message, and there are many resources online that can help you to find the perfect headline grabbing title, and the text that will pair nicely with it.
Fontjoy and Fontpair are two great websites that allow you to experiment with different fonts, and find one or two that I hope you will love!
