Choosing the Right Fonts: A Guide

Building off of what Rob talked about last week, in order to choose the right font you have to an idea of what you want the font to accomplish:
1. What feeling or emotion do you want the font to ellicit?
2. Is this font tied to a site-constant theme or is it being used for a separate, specific purpose?
3. Do you want this font to stand out (headline, logo) or blend in (body text)?

General Rules:
Don't use more than four fonts in a Web site design.
Avoid combining two or more serif or two or more sans-serif fonts in the same project.
Serif headline with sans serif body text is becoming more popular, but sans serif headlines with serif body text is also perfectly fine (more traditional)

A Guide for Choosing the Right Fonts:

1. Finding the right font family

http://www.fontscape.com/ - A good tool that groups and lists fonts.

http://www.adobe.com/type/browser/classifications.html - Another good tool that groups Adobe fonts. It has a cool word testing tool for fonts.

http://www.bsu.edu/web/ucspubs/pdf/other/typeface_classifications.pdf - Another guide for helping you choose a font family.

2. Comparing fonts and other stylistic options

http://typetester.maratz.com/ - A tool for comparing font and paragraph styles side by side.

http://www.fonttester.com/ - This is another good tool for comparing fonts.

3. A General Resource

http://typophile.com/ - (named by Beaird in the book)