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The Common Types of Fonts All Designers Should Know

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The Common Types of Fonts All Designers Should Know

A font can be described as the graphical representation of text that often includes a different point size, typeface, design, color, or weight. Fonts are used to add style to a document or a web page and help designers intuitively convey user interface content. Also, it guides mobile or web app users to interact with the interface conveniently and smoothly.

Fonts & their types

A font includes all elements like numbers, lowercase and uppercase letters, symbols, and punctuations. These elements help web designers deliver suggestions, ideas, guidelines, and other text-based information books, app pages of mobile or website, newspapers, and add an exceptional style to the documents and web pages.

Font Vs. Typography Vs. Typeface Vs. Font family

Typography is the technique and art of presenting text characters to make the information of your interface readable, legible, and appealing. It emphasized overall styles, layouts, and hierarchical relationships of the texts of your interface. Typography mainly focuses on engaging users and delivering interface content. A typeface or a font family can be described as the family or set of related fonts indicating more than two fonts with the same visual features. On the contrary, the font is the collection of lettering words used in the user interfaces of mobile or website applications.

Some Common Types of Fonts: How & When to Use Them

The users can see thousands of fonts available over the internet. Let’s glance at some of the main types of fonts that the users use in their mobile or web projects.

Serif Fonts

The fonts are considered the most classic and elegant typefaces that most web designers prefer to portray a formal, sophisticated, and traditional tone in designing various website and mobile applications. They feature a line, stroke, or small embellishment attached to the end of every letter. It gives document or web design a serious and elegant outlook. The most common Serif fonts that we use in our daily lives include Georgia, Times New Roman, Garamond, etc.

How & When to use?

  • Serif fonts are used in all situations like footers, text for short and extended content, headers, body texts, etc.
  • You can use serif fonts in larger sizes to see the details of the font quickly.
  • It is good to use serif fonts in serious or professional publications like educational websites, news, government, and technical websites.

Examples of Serif Fonts

Times New Roman

It is one of the topmost options for web designers for creating eye-friendly and elegant user interfaces. The font features tall letters in lowercase, strong contrast between thin and thick strokes, and sleek lines at the end.

Garamond

The old-fashioned serif font features an elegant handwritten outlook with clear contrast in strokes and organic letter structures. It is prevalent in the body text of websites and book printing.

Georgia

It works well on low-resolution or small web pages or screens.

Slab Serif Fonts

Slab serif fonts are also known as Square serif fonts with blocks, geometric-like serifs. They are bold, comprehensive and provides a vintage look to your design. Designers use slab serif fonts for magazines, brand logos, websites, and posters to attract customers. Some of the most popular slab serif fonts include Clarendon, Serifa, and Rockwell.

When & How to use?

Slab serif fonts are used for titles, brand logos, headlines, and many more things. Its sturdy and blocky appearance catches the attention of the readers immediately.

Examples of Slab Serif Fonts

Serifa

It belongs to the slab serif font family and is used in title, logo, and advertisement designs.

Rockwell

It is perfect for headlines, branding, and different uses of the display.

Sans Serif Fonts

These are classic and elegant typefaces with simple lines, no embellishment, stroke, or line at the end of every line, and precise and clean ends. It makes every letter very neat and clean. Sans serif fonts are widely used to create simple, efficient, and modern mobile or website applications. Some most popular sans serif fonts are Proxima Nova, Arial, and Helvetica.

When & How to use?

  • Sans serif fonts are more straightforward and efficient than serif fonts and are often used in logos, headlines, headers, headings, and many more.
  • These fonts have bold and clean lines with the same width throughout.
  • The fonts work well on a digital display of low-resolution.

Helvetica

It is used in brand logos, names, public signage on web pages. For example, Apple, Intel, Microsoft, and many other renowned companies use this font to present their logo and brand.

Aerial

It is one of the default options of font that all products of Microsoft provide. Aerial is suitable for advertising, promotion information, and displaying news for your mobile or website applications.

Decorative Fonts

Decorative fonts or Display fonts are used for ornamental or decorative purposes. You can use these eye-catching, beautiful, and creative fonts to decorate your web pages. Some of its examples are Chameleon and Vibro.

When & How to use?

Decorative fonts are suitable for advertisements, posters, headlines, logos, titles, and other large-sized texts to use on your interface.

Chameleon

The users get three options of style such as Solid, Outline, and Hatch. It is excellent when it comes to spice up your user interface.

Vibro

The font can be used to manage and create stunning and modern websites. Every letter rich with bright colors that can engage users is the main feature of this font.

Script Fonts

These fonts have a handwritten style that can deliver rich visuals and range from elegant to well-organized. They add personality to the various designs. Some of its examples are Arkipelago and Clattering.

When & How to use?

  • Script fonts are suitable for creating unique, personalized, or romantic invitations.
  • You can also use for websites or other designs like storytelling websites, designer portfolio websites, novel websites, or wedding websites,

Examples of Script Fonts

Arkipelago

It is a good option for web designers to create an impressive portfolio or personal websites. When you use it over a black image or background, it highlights the textual information leveling up the entire web page.

Clattering

The font is perfect for logos, branding, watermarks, invitations, and other designs for websites that require a handwritten tone.

Retro Fonts

These fonts are widely used for logos, websites, and bold headlines in vintage posters.

Examples of Retro Fonts

Sabo

The pixel-style font comes in two styles like filled and inline. It is suitable for creating interfaces or websites that can make users feel like classic games on Xbox.

Comic Fonts

Comic fonts consist of user-friendly and attractive cartoon elements like round strokes, balloons, and other symbols, making it easy for web designers to create a website with a specific theme or a storytelling website. Some comic fonts include Street Pops, Super Kids, and Banbang.

When & How to use

  • Comic fonts are perfect for creating e-commerce websites selling children, toy websites, a website offering an online course for children, storytelling children, and other children-oriented websites.
  • The fonts are suitable for creating an app or a unique website based on a popular comic series or book.

Examples of comic Fonts

Super Kids

It is an excellent example of the classic font of the comic with bright colors. The users can freely design any applications for children like educational resources, toys, and books.

Banbang

The font features eye-catching and beautiful bright colors and bold strokes. It is perfect for highlighting sales news or headlines on websites for children.

Several online publishers, website pages, and images use unique fonts to help you find the most suitable font for your project. But, how will you identify the font? It is effortless to do. There are many professional tools for fonts such as Font Finder, WhatTheFont, and Identifont that can help you identify a specific font in only a few clicks from web pages, images, or other designs publishers, designers, names, and appearance. If you want to create your font, then you can follow simple steps to do it. First of all, you will need to find out the type of font you need. Then, take a paper and sketch your font on it.

Source: The Common Types of Fonts All Designers Should Know

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