Typography in Web Design

Web typography is a major factor to consider in web design. Your web visitors will become more intimately involved with your chosen type than any other design element, since reading your content is their main activity while visiting most websites.

Some fonts are easier to read than others. If you choose a font that's harder on the eyes, you will have to use larger font sizes to compensate. Font size will vary from one display to another, so when selecting a font size, it should be large enough to be still easily legible on the largest common displays, where it will appear smallest. Each font has a unique feel, and contributes to the overall impression you make on your web visitors, so you will want to choose your fonts carefully.

Uncommon fonts are not recommended due to inconsistent support. Only very common ones are shown in the table of recommended fonts below. How the table appears to you depends on which fonts are installed on the computer you are using to view this page. You might make an aesthetic choice based on the first column, but be aware that a similar font shown in the second and subsequent columns will be used if the first one is not available to the viewing browser.

It is perfectly OK to have paragraph text in one font and headers in another. We do not recommend paragraph text using cursive or decorative fonts, but headers sometimes look quite nice in those. For search engine purposes, we do not recommend headers as graphic images, but it's OK to include text in a graphic image when that text is not critical to search engine rankings.

Details

Recommended Fonts

Comment	Windows 90%	Mac 4%	Backup	Linux 3%	Family	CSS
Versatile and classic	Tahoma	Arial	Helvetica	DejaVu Sans	sans-serif
Fresh and classic, small sizes only	MS Sans Serif	Geneva	Tahoma	DejaVu Sans	sans-serif
Universal, but less interesting	Arial	Arial	Tahoma	Nimbus Sans L	sans-serif
Rich and classic	Georgia	Georgia	Times New Roman	Century Schoolbook L	serif
Powerful and classic	Calisto	Times New Roman	Times	URW Palladio L	serif
Fresh and elegant	Palatino	Palatino	Baskerville	URW Palladio L	serif
Fresh and clean	Franklin Gothic Medium	Lucida Grande	Apple Gothic	URW Gothic L	sans-serif
Popular, but less versatile	Trebuchet	Trebuchet	Arial Narrow	Nimbus Sans L	sans-serif
Casual	Comic Sans	Chalkboard SE	Marker Felt	Nimbus Sans L	sans-serif
Less versatile	Impact	Impact	Futura	Nimbus Mono L	sans-serif
Less attractive	Courier New	Courier		Nimbus Mono L	monospace
Too wide	Verdana	Verdana	Arial	URW Gothic L	sans-serif
Declining support	Monotype Corsiva	Apple Chancery	Cochin	URW Chancery L	cursive