A font you can’t read is like an image that’s so busy you can’t tell what it’s supposed to be a picture of. Check whether a font’s legible by writing a variety of words in it, making sure you use every letter and a bunch of different letter combinations. Scale it up, then scale it down to see if there’s a size at which it becomes difficult to read. If you need text that small, choose a font that works at that size. Its balanced brush strokes and clear letterforms make it one of the easiest fonts to read, especially for longer texts.
In Arthean’s design for Planet Diamonds, we see a perfect example of a font that’s an ideal fit for its brand. Planet Diamonds creates lab-grown diamonds for its jewelry line, giving eco-focused consumers another option in the marketplace. The worst fonts are imbalanced, which makes them seem ugly.
Oversized Typography
As you may have noticed from this list, many of the easiest fonts to read are sans-serif typefaces. Designed in the digital age, Open Sans was meant to be a one-size-fits-all font for graphic design that could appeal to many different preferences while also staying extremely easy to read. For print fonts, serifs — the embellishments, like small tails, added to the base letters — help our brains recognize text and read easily — and quickly! But many different fonts have serifs, and that doesn’t automatically make them easy to read. The extra space also helps the brain recognize them more quickly, and reduces fatigue when reading, especially for large blocks of text.
It’s best to play around like this yourself, however, as changing font size often has a non-linear effect at these small sizes. The answers to this question are all great, but honestly, you should look at all the different option. Squeezing as much text in as little space as possible always means you’ve botched a previous design choice. Here is a simple listing showing Arial, Segoe UI, and Tahoma fonts at various sizes. Notice that the relative space taken up by each font is different at different point sizes. Also think about the associations people make with certain fonts.
Wrapping Up: Revolutionize Your Reading with the Easiest Fonts
This trend is significant enough that you can read more about it here. This is a prime – and nicely executed – example of text that has no readable intent behind it. Nothing about the text element implies that you should read it, other than the fact that it is how to pick fonts for website text. There are moving filled and outline elements moving in opposite directions; the text is tilted 90 degrees and inversed on one side. As such, this answer is here to help the next person that has this issue to be mindful of not making the same mistake.
The results as I recall them were that Segoe UI and Tahoma were the best with respect to space utilization and readability for UI purposes at 10pt and 9pt sizes. In the short term we settled on Tahoma since Segoe UI isn’t freely available for operating systems below Windows Vista. See this list for a lineup of available Windows fonts as well as information about the best of use of each. Arial is one example of a font we’ve all seen a million times before. It doesn’t add anything to the design, it doesn’t communicate a brand in a meaningful way. Consistency means all the letters, numbers and any other characters used maintain the same look.
Hard To Read Fonts
Similarly, if you’re drafting a blog post, Roboto’s optimal readability can hold your audience’s attention, encouraging them to explore your content in depth. Using Roboto for your app’s text guarantees a clean, easy-to-read interface that users will appreciate. Roboto and its many variants is the Google font, designed with an eye for both style and functionality.
After going through all of the several hundred fonts on the system, the one that fit the most character data within the least amount of space, while still being legible was (surprisingly) Apple Symbols. For anyone who’s looking for an alternative to sans-serif fonts, there’s Merriweather. Designed for web use by Google, Merriweather features semi-condensed spacing that still leaves enough space between letters for it to be legible at small sizes. Those who have been working in web design for a while might remember when Merriweather was the default for most WordPress templates — and for good reason. And as we’ve transitioned from reading mostly on paper to mostly on screens throughout the digital age, some conventional wisdom about the easiest fonts to read has changed. In some cases, a font that’s clear and legible in print isn’t as easy to read on a website, for example — especially on a small screen like a smartphone.
Please Your Audience With Open Sans
This shows that typography here is much more of an art element than a text element. It’s a solid solution for designs without a lot of other competing visuals, such as the example above from Robert Leitl. The question is whether you need to actually glean any information from the words. That’s what keeps you from getting hung up on the design treatment and continuing to flow through the design. Readability can vary widely based on size, font selection, and animation speed. Circular text elements could be considered a trend on their own.
I find Verdana to be ideal for small font sizes (not so much for bigger ones). When you take Segoe to 13px and beyond, numbers really start to look odd. Switch between the two and ask a few people which is easier to read??? In a comparison that I did with numbers, I found Myriad Pro, Source Sans Pro, Segoe UI, and Tahoma to be the best for readability with minimum width at 9px-11px. Note that these fonts handle sizes very differently, so often a size offset needs to be incorporated to do a fair comparison.
Try The Timeless Classic: Helvetica
Typically, serif fonts like Mrs Eaves and Baskerville convey sophistication and timeless luxury, so they’re popular with more upscale brands. On the flipside, more casual, informal brands tend to use sans serif fonts like Akzidenz-Grotesk. If your brand personality calls for a handwritten style, you might be better off getting custom lettering rather than choosing a uniform font that mimics a hand-drawn look (see Fauxoitc above). It’s designed to be recognizable even at a smaller font size and on smaller device screens.
- As you can see, with certain fonts, different words and letters can look so similar that it’s hard to distinguish between them.
- But the font was found to be so widely appealing and easy to read, it’s now the default for Chrome browsers, as well.
- Segoe UI has too much contrast and tends to look busy at solid black.
- There’s nothing outstandingly wrong with these fonts because there’s nothing outstanding about them, period.
- Readability can vary widely based on size, font selection, and animation speed.
Arial Narrow and Helvetica Condensed are two obvious options, but I don’t find them very readable and they come off as looking cheap. Depending on what platform you are developing for, you may also want to look at modifying font metrics if possible. In .NET with WPF I recall there being quite a bit of ways to modify how the text is rendered to allow for condensing the space between characters and to make the individual characters more narrow. Using this type of technique you can stick with whatever font you like and just tweak it’s rendering to get the results you need. With all the great fonts out there, there’s no reason to settle for anything less than the perfect font for your brand. Some of the worst typefaces make up for their lack of personality with impersonation.
Design Trend: Text That’s Not Readable
Didot is an excellent font that uses dramatic variations between thick and thin strokes while still managing to maintain balance. Bodoni is another famous example of a well-balanced font with its strong, solid vertical strokes and lighter arches and curves. Its serifs add a small bit of classy flair that also feels like counterweights keeping the letters upright. Too little space, and the font is unreadable because the letters are smushed together.
