Typeface Research

The first thing I did before choosing any typefaces, was read this article from Smashing Magazine (written by Douglas Bonnevillle), which is about choosing a typeface.

I found it very useful in helping to remind me of the things we must consider when deciding on a typeface. These include:

  • Your goal
  • Legibility
  • Readability
  • Aspects of Appropriateness
  • Mood
  • Personal Choice

Bonneville then went on to give some tips for choosing a typeface. These include:

  • Plan your hierarchy
  • Consider what others have already done
  • Experiment the easy way
  • Avoid anachronisms
  • Consider an extended type family
  • Stick with classic combinations
  • Use a limited palette
  • Break the rules!

 

 

You might have to go through a bunch of bad ideas to get a great one – but enjoy the process.

 

Time to Decide

Now that I have reminded myself of some of the things to keep in mind when choosing a typeface (as well as learning some new things), I am ready to start the process of choosing mine for this project.

 

Here is a chart of the visual hierarchy I am going with:

 

 

With this in mind, I can start considering which typeface to use for my headings. I want the typeface to be professional, whilst also having a playfulness to it. For this, I have considered mostly serif typefaces, as I think they can look really nice in headings, and add a classic feeling to the UI.

 

Here are some that I considered:

 

 

I found these fonts at first, when looking through Adobe Fonts. I then looked on Google Fonts for others, as well as Dafont (where I ended up finding the one I liked most).

 

 

This typeface is called NT Josefine. I thought this typeface felt really fun. The rounded, almost curly, serifs on certain letters really stood out to me, and they make the typeface look very unique. I also really liked the length of the serifs on the bar of the capital T.

I am also thinking about using this typeface for the wordmark of my brand, however, I am not too sure about using a serif font for this – so I’ll ask the opinion of my peers, as well as see what Paul thinks before going forward with this.

 

As for the body type, I will be using a sans-serif typeface. Doing this will increase legibility – given the nice crisp lines in a sans-serif.

 

Here are some of my considerations:

 

 

I ended up liking Nunito the most. This is because the ends of the lines of each letter are rounded off. I think this gives a really friendly feeling to the typeface, which matches the tone of voice of my brand really well, and that’s exactly what I want!