One of the choices that you have to make when you are building a website is what font and what font sizes to use.

 

About 15 years ago (or about the time that Desktop Publishing became both popular and possible because of new software) some of the worst looking newsletters and websitesto ever have reached the civilized world, were published. The main reason that they were so bad was that people who always wanted to design publications, but never had, now had a chance to go at it. They tried all sorts of unusual looking fonts - tried them bold, in italics, in all the colors of the rainbow, slanted, wrapped around circles.

 

I know this for a fact, because I was one of them.

 

Now when people ask me what is a good font for developing websites, I give them these suggestions.

 

If you want a serif font (serif fonts are the ones where the letters - like T - have little feet on them). Newspapers and most printed work use serif fonts. Look at the New York Times newspaper. That is a good example. It is very readable. The font is Times New Roman. Another serif font is Georgia. This font was developed for website developers who liked the look of serif fonts and it was considered to be a little bit more readable on a computer screen than Times.

 

But most website developers use a san serif font (I think of them as "without feet") for their websites. The two most common are Arial and Helvetica, which are very similar. Several other san serif fonts that have been popular or developed for web use are Verdana, Tahoma and Trebuchet.

 

They all work. The problems you might run into with the last 3 fonts are that every web development program may not have them.

 

Another thing to think about is that what you put down on your website may look different when it shows up at the end of the internet on a different computer. Depending on what browser you use, such as Internet Explorer, Netscape or Foxfire, there are some things you might not see or may just plain look different.

 

My suggestion is to go with something simple and easy to read. Unless you are a designer, stick with keeping your body copy at about 10 pts or larger. And your copy headers at 12 points. You can get a bit fancier with your main headers - larger font size, colors, things like that - because there are fewer of them and they are meant to be a bit decorative.

 

Websites are a means of communication. If you can't read them on the other end, no matter how good or interesting they look, they aren't doing the job. So skip the "all caps" sentences. No alternating colors - green on this line, yellow on the next, red on the third line, etc. Make your sentences short. A long sentence in pale green or chartreuse can be almost impossible to read. Take a look at corporate websites. They may use little teeny print and fancy stuff like that - but the main copy that they write is usually in black or dark gray. They don't get paid if nobody reads their stuff.

 

 

 

At TeamBWS we have been working on some new websites and I am more than amused by the differences in what is considered a good site.

 

According to designers on the internet, the "in" thing is Web 2.0 using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and free floating, unboundedtext. The idea, as I understand it, is to give a website a more flowing design and fewer boxes on the screen that can't be moved without extensive programming. None of those old fashion "pill" buttons. No crass visual overload with flashing icons competing for attention. Screens are less crowded; easier to read. They have a more sophisticated look.

 

So we put together several sophisticated, edgy, graphic oriented websites. Most of our clients are in the computer business so we figured they would know what the newest look is for websites.

 

Wrong. The sites they like are the ones built about 5 years ago. I tried to figure out where we had gone wrong. So I looked on the internet to find out what the "best" websites looked like and then a found a site called "Your Website Sucks". They had check lists of what not to do and I matched what my boss wanted with the things on the list. He pretty much wanted everything that the "Sucks" website said was wrong or passé.

 

I figure if we build a website that is exactly what is on the Your Website Sucks list, we will build the perfect website for our clients.

 

I haven't quite figured why this is. The best I can do is look back at 15 years of working with websites and see the different trends. There was a time you had to have a splash page, preferably with music, starting your website. Now that is considered a website design crime. Animated gifs were new and cute. Does anyone even remember how to do those? Gaudy, rotating logos were very cutting edge. Preferably with a light glinting off the edge as the logo turned.

 

What it boils down to is that websites follow fads and technology just as much as any other means of communication. The clean, graphic look of one website bores the people who want lots of buttons and action. The button people are considered to be in very bad taste by the graphic people.

 

The only thing that we can agree on is that the site needs to work. You have to be able to find what you want. No dead ends. No confusing loops. No e-commerce sites where you bomb out when you try to check out. So we are back to programming metallic looking buttons and somber, gritty cy-fi colors. Ce la vie.