Top 10 Design Tips for Creating a Beautiful Design

   #9 [ Selection and Sizing of Fonts ]

Choosing the Right Fonts

Choosing fonts for your project can be a bit daunting. You want to make sure you pick fonts that go together, and you don’t want to over burden your page by having too many fonts or too many font sizes for that matter.

NOTE: You should use no more than 3 different fonts and 3 different sizes in your project. One for the title, one for the main body copy and one for special call-outs or quotes. It's very important to keep all fonts and sizing consistent throughout your project! ie: if you use a 12 pt. Garamond font for your body copy on one page, then all body copy throughout the project should maintain the 12pt. Garamond font.

To get started, you’ll need to know the difference between serif and sans serif fonts. Serif fonts have finishing strokes on the end of the letter, such as in this font. Examples include Garamond and Times New Roman. Sans serif fonts do not have finishing strokes on the end of the letter, such as the title of this article. Examples include Arial and Calibri.

There are three basic types of text you will apply fonts to. One is the title. The second is the body or copy of your story. The last is any special call-outs of quotes that are featured.

For titles, you may have many different titles to deal with depending on your project. If you are doing a poster or a canvas, you will most likely have one title. If you are doing a storybook, you will have the main title of the book and, possibly, subtitles within the book. Make your title consistent to help keep the flow from page to page. As a bit of advice, I would recommend that you do not choose two serif fonts or two sans serif fonts. Mix it up a little. You can choose a fancy font such as Broadway, then add a serif or sans serif font to the mix. 

For the copy or main text, you will want to choose a readable font. Choose a simple serif or sans serif font, no fancy fonts or script fonts. Good fonts are Garmond, Times New Roman, Avenir, and Trajan.

For call-outs or quotes, I usually use the same font as the main copy text that I have chosen but add on either the italic or bold enhancement. This will differentiate it a bit but will still have a consistent look and feel throughout.

DESIGN TIP: Use Script fonts for titles or small pieces of text only! The goal of your font usage is to help ease the work of your reader. They don't want to stare at a long piece of writing, trying to figure out what it says, which is what they will do with a script font. Script fonts are very difficult to read in paragraph form.