How important is choosing the right fonts?

Hi,

I am hoping to generate some discussion around the use of fonts in page presentation (i have no design skills!) I am faced with choosing a more contemporary set of fonts for the next version of my site. I was quite taken with the logo font at www.webmd.com, if anyone knows the actual names of the font/s used I'd love to know. I seem to see quite a lot of "Trebuchet MS" around, and I like it too. I don't want my font of choice to be out of fashion in a years time, but i'm no longer happy with Verdana, Arial, Helvetica. I guess i'm just bored with it.

Any help would be great.

 

Since most logos nowadays (especially online) are what's known in the business as "type treatments" (just text), fonts will pretty much make or break your logo. And you're right to be bored with Arial, Helvetica and Verdana, because the internet has made those fonts the bastard children of the font world because everyone and their mother uses them for sites.

And thanks to blogs, fonts like Century Gothic, Georgia and Trebuchet are also dilluted into lame fonts.

If you're serious about your logo's font, I suggest looking at as many fonts as you can find, see what you like and dislike about them to narrow down your search.

I'd recommend getting someone with some actual design background (not someone who has played with Photoshop for a couple years but someone who's either taken design classes or is a working designer) to take your text to the next level by modifying it or customizing it.

Which I believe the WebMD logo is. The "M" looks like it's from the Apolline font, modified, and the "D" is possibly the Angie font. The "eb" in "Web" looks like Olympian. Unfortunately the "W" could be any one of hundreds of fonts.

If you go to the following page you can see a whole bunch of logos, covering a wide range of fonts.

http://coolhomepages.com/sort/?catName=Logos&sortType=DATE&pageNo=1

 

Sketch, thanks for the help, that coolhomepages site is quite a big resource. One other thing that is important to me is the text used in the copy body. I don't want users to sit and stare at it like I do when I see something cool. I just get lost in the beauty of it, and forget what I'm doing on the site. Do you think it's a good thing choosing a font that stands out for the majority of your body text? Plus I've realized I'll have to stick to a font that most windows machines have, which makes it more interesting considering i'm on an apple mac. hrmmm The plot thickens.

 

You're referring to the actual body copy, posts, articles, etc. Yes, that will have to be a standard web font (Times, Arial, Verdana, Helvetica, Sans-Serif, Georgia or Courier). If you use any font but those you'll run into the chance that the visitor won't see the site as it was meant to be.

I'd given an example in another thread about a client at the studio I work at that insisted on using a script (elegant, curly wedding-type font) font for their site. We went back and forth trying to explain to them that it wouldn't work but they still insisted.

And then when we showed them the site, they got mad at us because it didn't look good!! Fortunately I had done it in CSS and so the entire site was fixed with a few keystrokes

 

Nice Url. There are plenty of logos and font used with theme of logos. I love it. Thankyou for sharing.

 

Ahh this is perfect for me since i have been learning typography in graphics class lately.
Font really does matter greatly. The font must fit or else... your page will be marked as garbage.

 

If you are talking logos, then there are many new and old choices.

But text for reading can be the main aspect of a page once the header drops from view.

I understand that serif fonts are better for extended length articles or multiple chapters.

But for 1000 words or less, I think the arial style fonts are clean and crisp. Hardly any font beats arial for a small italicized image caption.

I think Thunderbird is a nifty font for western themes. But I'm not sure if it will work for the text codes and styles. Maybe in a logo.

 

OK thanks everyone, mdvaden I shall be comparing serif and arial, and faille, feel free to share your pearls of wisdom discovered in typography class

 

It's mainly that I recall a friend telling me to use serif because it's easier to read for extended periods of time. He does web and graphic design, and has a background in printed materials too. I think what he said makes sense, because I notice a difference on my own advice pages when reading them. Some of mine are serif fonts, others are not.

Recently, I started making my heading titles Georgia instead of arial. Not sure why - just like the look better. I suppose it's got an "older" look to it. A bit like book print.