Is Your Blog Font Chasing Away Readers?
July 2, 2008 · Print This Article
Bamboo Forest, in a comment on my previous post about keys to blogging success, said:
“Presentation is also key. For example, if one’s font is too small, or the layout is cluttered, this can put one at an unnecessary disadvantage which is particularly painful if the content is excellent.”
He’s right. Your choice of font is very important–it impacts the readability of your blog or website.
David Cross, Senior Internet Consultant for Agora Inc., writes on Early to Rise about how to choose the font that best fits your site.
Cross says, “[If] you make the wrong choice, you could be prohibiting your customers from reading your online content or sales promotions. And if they can’t read your copy, there’s a good chance they won’t buy anything from you.”
I’ve been fiddling with font choices a little, but I haven’t paid as much attention to it as I probably should. When I was creating this blog, I spent some time looking for just the right font to use for the title, Robust Writing, at the very top left-hand corner.
Originally, I wanted Gotham, after I saw how well GQ Magazine and Barack Obama have been using it. I didn’t want to pay for one, so after going back and forth with the Men with Pens (who really built this blog), they found a similar font that was free–Futura. I loved it–it’s bold, big, clean, and simple.
Of course, that’s just the title. I’m not sure what font I use for the blog text. Time for me to find out. But, I have changed my email feed fonts, both the headline and the body, to Arial.
The key difference here is between serif fonts and sans-serif fonts. Cross explains:
“A serif is the small embellishment on the ends of the up-strokes (ascenders) or down-strokes (descenders) of some fonts. The serif gives the typeface a more ‘elegant’ look and feel.”
I like elegant looks, but early on, it seemed to me that clean, clear, and simple is the way to go online (just like with your writing). Thus, I’ve chosen to go with sans-serif (no serif) fonts whenever I can, such as Arial, Futura, and Verdana.
Examples of serif fonts are Times, Palatino, and Bembo.
My instinctive online font preferences seem to be confirmed by Cross:
“The general rule about fonts is as follows: For printed content, blocks of text using serif fonts are generally more legible. On a computer (or television) screen, sans-serif fonts are generally more legible.” [Emphasis mine]
So, what fonts do you use for your blog title, post headlines, body text, and so on? Have you seen some blogs or websites that are just unreadable because of their font choices? Any that are beautiful in large part because of the fonts they use?
Jesse,
the discussion about serif/sans-serif fonts has been going on for decades in the offline world. It was generally agreed upon that serif fonts were more legible in paragraphs (the serifs make it easier for the eyes to create a reading flow) while sans-serif fonts were better for headlines or short sentences as eye-catchers (they are faster to read) - just as Cross says.
But I’ve read new research (sorry, but I can’t find a link right now) that came up with different results. The results of this new study indicated that sans-serif fonts were ALWAYS better to read. While I don’t doubt the results, I wonder how much that has to do with conditioning of the population. A decade ago, most people would have read 95% of text in serif fonts (newspapers usually only set the headline in sans-serif) and very little in sans-serif. My guess is, today the figures are reversed. Humans are very susceptible to such conditioning and I wonder whether that skews the results.
But for your direct implementation, I think you are safe if using sans-serif fonts throughout your blog. I see that you (just like myself) are using a serif font for your headlines and sans-serif for the text. although that’s completely against traditional beliefs, I think it works for the medium.
Jo’s last blog post..Ode to a Dream - Ya-Ya teahouse has closed down
Jo,
Very interesting points you’ve raised. It’s remarkable how such a seemingly small (and I’m sure often overlooked) aspect of design–font choice–can have such significant effects.
I’m thinking about changing my headlines to sans-serif. I’m going to do more research on this–it’s kind of fascinating when I think about it.
Thanks for sharing your perspective.
[...] and behold, the man made an entire blog entry out of it. [...]
We have done testing on different font types and found it shocking how many users are put off by a wrong font.
Very good post you raised here. Too many people over look small parts of the design like the fonts.