• • • Design Articles - Correct use of Fonts • • •



• Correct use of fonts • Design rules • Like in magazines •

Not many webmaster's realize the power of fonts' style. Yes, "power", because fonts can perfectly reflect the mood, epoch, atmosphere the general feel of the website. Imagine that we will take a Gothic website and replace the medieval curly letters with plain Arial font... what will we get? Most likely 70% of the site's character will be lost. Another example can be a corporate business template of a web-design company, with "cartoon-like" font used for the header... Will we take that site serious? Even if we will, perhaps we would assume this website deals with design for children.

It is important to note, that "damage" can be done to your layout only if you make an incorrect use of a "fancy" font. Working with any of the default fonts such as "Arial", "Trebuchet Ms", "Verdana" and others, might not comprehensively deliver the mood of your site, but will never make the wrong impression. But, staying on the safe side might prevent your layout from been memorable and unforgettable.

Today, you can download many free fonts from DaFont -- this website offers more than 6,000 fonts of different nature -- stencil, groovy, gothic, foreign look, calligraphy and more.

If you struggle to decide what font will reflect your site best, here is a very brief summary of general fonts' nature and their possible use:
• Handwritten and calligraphy fonts will perfectly suit a poetry or an art site. Also, use it whenever you want to give your layout a bit of a "personal" touch.
• Stencil, army, basic Sans Serif, LCD, Sci-Fi and other techno and fixed fonts will accompany good any modern site of a funky nature such as modern music, dance, night clubs, etc.
• Cartoon, comic, groovy and graffiti fonts will, obviously, reflect the mood of kids and teens oriented sites, games and other children's portals.
• Celtic and modern Gothic fonts can smoothly associate with any folk related websites such as ancient tales, legends, mythology. Naturally, Greek-like font will suit the Greek Mythology, Chinese-like letters -- Far East takes, and so on.

The list can be endless, as there are countless fonts and infinite amount of themes for one's website. You should remember that font has a great potential, if it is used wisely. However, last thing that is very important to mention is: avoid working with commonly-used fancy fonts. What is a commonly used font? For instance -- "Coca Cola", " Walt Disney", "Celtic MD", "Marcelle" or "Aladdin" -- are the font we all know. They will have 2 big disadvantages, if will appear on your site. Firstly - they will never be associated with YOUR design, as they automatically bring another memories in visitor's head, and secondly -- will prevent your site from been unique.

The bottom line is: always follow your creativity, try to design something different, something exclusive, individual and one-of-a-kind. This is the key to success.

Back to the main categories of tutorials:

• Articles • HTML • Graphical Tutorials •