Typography Matters a LOT for Your Website
The next time you visit your favorite website take note of the font used, the way the letters are spaced and aligned, and the general feel that you get just from looking at it. That’s the power of typography at work—the age-old art of designing and arranging type.
If you weren’t aware of this on that website before, it’s because good typography often works subtly. After all, good design flows naturally without calling attention to itself. It’s only when we see bad-looking fonts (remember Comic Sans?) that we start to notice something is wrong with the typography.
Typography Is Everywhere
Here’s something the average person might not appreciate: typography is serious stuff. The world celebrates anniversaries of certain typefaces (like Helvetica), some fonts are actually sold for an incredible price, and type designers (like Matthew Carter) enjoy celebrity status just for inventing a font.
We’re so used to seeing the printed word everywhere—on magazines, on websites, on billboards, on your milk carton, etc— that many of us have taken it for granted.
Deliver the right message through your typeface
It’s all about communicating a message and delivering it in style. The right typography sends the appropriate message to your audience.
For example, bold letters on a wanted poster indicate urgency, while a longhand style of typeface on a wedding invitation signals the delicateness and intimacy of this most cherished moment. In the same way, a clean modern font for your website shows your brand is trustworthy and professional. The right font is particularly important when you consider what target medium they will be viewed on—whether on screens or on print.
That’s why companies are willing to pay a premium price just so type designers can create custom fonts for them. Bragging rights have nothing to do with it—commissioning your very own font for your website not only evokes a professional image to your brand, it also plays an important role in affecting your readers’ mood when viewing your website.
In fact, there are numerous scientific studies on the subtle yet significant influence of typography on readers—the way their eyes react to letters, their comprehension, and the general mood they find themselves in.
Custom fonts vs Google safe fonts
As we saw above, using an already-existing font is simply a no-no for many. Old fonts tend to be clichéd and their widespread use traps them in association with certain things—for example: advertisements, movie posters, banners, etc. However, there are classic fonts that have stood the test of time and type designers rely on them for a professional look. These include Helvetica, Garamond, Futura, Gill Sans, Rockwell, Avant Garde, and Apple’s favorite, Myriad.
A great advantage of using these fonts over custom ones is that they are web safe, i.e. you don’t run the risk of the font not displaying and being swapped for default fonts if the website visitor doesn’t have the font you use stored in their computer. Moreover, Google safe fonts don’t affect performance the way custom fonts do, as there are no issues with file size when uploading them.
If you want to make sure that the font you are thinking of using for your website is web safe you can check this list. Also, if you want to make sure your Chinese characters display properly and look like more than just empty squares you should follow these tips.
Choosing the right font for your website
If you haven’t decided on fonts yet, these websites offer some cool ones for you to browse and purchase: fonts.com, myfonts.com and Typekit. Now if you are completely lost, then maybe some of our favorite fonts could help. IT Consultis designers love Futura, DIN, Helvetica Neue thin 35, Century Gothic and Lato, just to name a few!
Typography Changes the Mood
Remember the old days of Windows when the BSOD (blue screen of death) would flash with its dreaded paragraphs of text? They were done in Lucida Console. Now, Microsoft has whittled down all that heavy text to a sad face 
with the simple and short message saying Your PC ran into a problem that it couldn’t handle, and now it needs to restart (Unfortunately, that message is a bit too uninformative, and users could certainly use the extra info as to exactly why their PC crashed.)
Anyway, the screen is now a softer shade of blue, and the typeface used is called Segoe UI. It’s elegant, clean, friendlier, and easy to look at, making the experience of a BSOD a lot less scary. That’s good typography at work.