Polished Corporate Website Design – How to Combine Fonts?

Vũ Khôi

Author at Wotech Electronics Blog

Website design is essential work, because the website is the face of a business — the channel through which its products and services are introduced in the most systematic, professional way. For that reason, website design deserves proper investment and attention from business operators. Among the elements a professional corporate website design needs, using and combining the right fonts is absolutely essential. Let's dive into this fascinating topic right now.

Why do fonts matter in website design?

Typefaces (also called fonts or typography) are an inseparable part of website design. Using fonts sensibly lays out the content on your website professionally, provides an attractive appearance, and preserves the aesthetics of your entire site. Choosing suitable typefaces plays an important role in giving a website its distinctive style. Combining them correctly raises the effectiveness and professionalism of a corporate website design, creating better, more enjoyable on-page experiences for users and keeping visitors on the site longer. Conversely, unsuitable fonts can make content harder to read and create an unpleasant feeling for readers.

Learning to combine basic typefaces effectively is an important first stepping stone for any web designer. Skilled, seasoned designers can breathe life into even the simplest design and make it far more effective and beautiful. Once they have mastered those rules, web designers can experiment with fresher pairings to create font combinations that are unique and carry a personal signature — or even invent typography styles of their own brand.

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So is there a standard formula for combining different fonts on one website?

Among the hundreds of thousands of typefaces available today, trying to figure out exactly where to start with website design can be overwhelming, even for experienced designers. Understanding the characteristics of different typefaces should be the first step, because it lays an important foundation for figuring out how to combine them later.

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The 4 groups of typefaces in website design

To make this easier, get acquainted with the typeface classification system — one of the most fundamental concepts in typography in particular and website design in general. Today, most fonts fall into one of 4 groups: serif, sans serif, script, and decorative.

Serif and sans serif are the most widely used typefaces because they suit both headlines and body text. Script (often called handwriting-style fonts) and decorative (stylized, ornamental fonts) usually appear only in headlines. Fonts in these 2 groups are generally not used for paragraphs of text, or if they are, only in very small amounts.

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Comparing the serif and sans serif groups in website design

Serif fonts are believed to make long passages of text easier to read, especially in traditional designs such as print. Because of their most basic characteristic — the serifs, or feet (a small extra stroke added at the start or end of each main stroke of a letter) — these fonts help readers follow each line of text easily, making them especially useful in website designs with a lot of content.

Sans serif fonts, unlike serif fonts in that their characters have no feet, are particularly suitable and easy to read at small sizes (such as the typefaces used for captions or meta information). Sans serif fonts are widely and commonly used in corporate website design and are even said to be easier for users to read than serif faces. Part of this view dates back to the early days of the computer industry, when screen resolution was still relatively low, making complex serif fonts look slightly blurry at certain sizes. Today, however, with HD and Retina displays, this is no longer a serious issue, and we can comfortably use both font families in the same design.

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How should you combine typeface groups to make a website design effective?

Combining typefaces from the same group is usually simpler and safer than combining typefaces from different classifications. The main reason is that each group has its own characteristics, and the traits of fonts from different groups are sometimes complete opposites. It is precisely because of this that you can freely and effectively combine typefaces within the same group or across groups for your website design, as long as you understand their characteristics well. Learning which font characteristics relate to each other allows web designers to combine them with confidence. That said, sometimes listening to your intuition is a direction worth trying.

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Font weight in website design – How to achieve harmony?

Weight is another characteristic to consider in any website design. Thin, regular, semibold, bold, and black are examples of font weights. The contrast between the weights of different typefaces is a factor well worth considering when pairing them. Combining a very heavy font with a very thin one usually feels unbalanced. For example, a heavy font like Bevan cannot harmonize with a very thin font like Helvetica Neue UltraLight — the gap is such that the thin, light letters nearly disappear next to it.

But combining typefaces of the same weight can also be a challenge, because even within the same weight class, each font has a different degree of heaviness. Instead, when starting out with font pairings, it is easiest to look for typefaces that are clearly distinguishable but not drastically different in weight. Website designers can then branch out toward bolder contrasts. For example, the same Bevan font actually pairs well with Gill Sans.

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Pay attention to x-height and the feeling a font conveys to make your website design more professional

X-height is the height of individual characters in a typeface — specifically the lowercase letter x. Typefaces with similar x-heights pair better with each other than typefaces with different x-heights. For example, Futura and Century Old Style share the same x-height, so combined they produce a more pleasing visual effect than when paired with Baskerville, which has a lower x-height.

The feeling a typeface conveys is another aspect you should consider before deciding which typeface to use in your website design. A font's feel can range from formal to informal, feminine, strong, simple, serious, and so on. When combining fonts, the key is to find typefaces that convey a similar feeling to the reader. Pairing a playful font with a very serious one creates visual confusion.

Those are just a few font-pairing tips from the many "secrets" Markdao has accumulated on its journey providing website design services to its clients. With Markdao Vietnam's web design service, you don't need to worry about whether fonts are suitable — down to the smallest detail, including choosing typefaces that fit your design and industry, everything is carefully "hand-picked" by us. Let's create the best possible website for your very own business! Contact us for a consultation at HOTLINE: +84 79 993 1071 (Ms. Trinh) or Email: [email protected]

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