How to Choose the Right Font

Selecting an appropriate typeface or font for the text of your project should not be left to chance. The best starting point is to know who your audience will be. Take time to investigate fonts and choose the most appropriate.

First of all, you need to understand that typography is as much an art as it is a science. Second, it’s about responsibility to your readers. Your choice should not hinder their reading pleasure, but should assist it. Third, typefaces have personality. Do you want a font that’s like a business suit or a Hawaiian shirt? Or perhaps, an interesting combination of both? The key is to strike a balance between the tried-and-true classics and some of the more modern typefaces.

Following are several parameters to consider in your search:

1. Demographics—You need to know who your intended audience is, including age range and specific interests. Are they scientists, lawyers, engineers, baby boomers, housewives, do-it-yourselfers, children? You also need to have a clear understanding of your goals for the work. Whatever your project, your font choice should engage your particular audience. For example, if you’re writing for a technical audience, you might choose a typeface that looks clean and modern, maybe even edgy.
2. Legibility—Your font choice should be legible and easy to read. The object is to attract and hold your reader’s attention. Unusual, decorative, or eye-catching type styles should be saved for titles, headlines, or other prominent or unusual applications.
3. Copy length—The length of your work will often determine the choice of type font. For shorter pieces, you might consider a typeface with more flair, because your reader’s attention will likely be less likely distracted. However, for books or magazine- and newspaper-articles, the increased length requires a greater degree of legibility, or readability.
4. Serif vs Sans Serif—Many people feel that serif fonts (the ones with the small lines or “feet” attached to the end of a letter) are easier to read for longer works than sans serifs (without serifs), provide continuity and engagement, and therefore improve readability. This may be especially true for smaller font sizes. While this is somewhat controversial, and might be valid in some situations, it’s not actually a rule. Keep in mind that people read most easily and comfortably that which they’re most familiar with. Another factor to consider in making your decision is that the likely or potential reading environment (print, electronic, website) may affect the legibility.
5. Font size—The size you choose will often be determined by the font family you choose. Some font families are naturally smaller than others, even when they’re listed as the same font size. This might be especially true if, for example, you use one font style for headings and another for your body text. And there’s the impact of styles like italics or bold. How will these look?
6. Color. Color can enhance a project, but it can also distract. For example, you might draft a great work on the history of typography, but it would likely meet with derision if it were delivered using 18-point bright yellow italic Comic Sans. Depending on the medium, it would be judicious to err on the side of caution, especially on websites intended to be serious.
7. Special features—The visual quality of your project may benefit from such eye-catching enhancement such as small caps, underline, fractions, subscripts and superscripts, or foreign or alternate characters. So, before you choose your font family, make sure that it has the features you want.
8. Print, electronic, web, or other media—As stated above, the medium in which your work will appear is very important. Each medium may, and often does, have different requirements. Print, ebooks, and websites (especially those using a vendor’s template) may each need a different typeface. So, you’ll either have to search for one for each use or one that’s appropriate for all your intended usages—and will perform well in all of your desired environments. Whatever your medium, try to “test drive” the font. If you’re using an electronic medium, try it on different size screens, on a cell phone, on a PC and a Mac, at different resolutions. How does it look in each one? Ask others to look at it and give you their opinions and impressions.

Conclusion

The first step in choosing a typeface is to do your homework. That way, you can narrow your choices to those that most effectively meet the needs of your project—and your audience. But it’s also occasionally fun or rewarding to experiment with new ideas. So, try some new versatile and reliable typefaces, and add them to your list of favorites. Remember that typography is an art, and your font decisions and how they’re received are subjective.

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