As bloggers, it’s so easy for us to get all wrapped up in the articles we write and the discussions that they start… but how much thought do you give to the way your blog looks? More specifically, and for the purposes of this article, do you give a great deal of thought to the particular font that you use?
When it comes to choosing a font for your blog site, there are two things that you should take into consideration: your personality and font style compatibility across the two major operating systems.
Your personality
If you think fonts have the ability to say something about our personality, you’re absolutely right (at least if a certain report is anything to go by)! A few years back a study appropriately titled, “The Psychology of Fonts” was commissioned by Lexmark Printers, with the actual report being written by psychologist Dr. Aric Sigman.
The study suggested that fonts, like handwriting, can be used to analyze somebody’s personality. That means that if a reader is reading your blog, they will come to their own conclusions about who they believe you are as a person, based partly upon your font choice.
If you have a few moments, it’s worth taking a look at the BBC News report. To give you a glimpse of what Dr. Sigman concluded in his report, he found that most people believe the Courier font is the choice of “sensible shoes” types and that fonts like Georgia and Shelly reveal somewhat of a “rock chick” personality.
He also concluded that the wrong font choice can give people the wrong about idea about your personality entirely.
Compatibility Across the Two Operating Systems
Realistically, the majority of your readers will be using one of two operating systems: Windows or Mac OS (I use both daily). This simple fact can create some difficulties for us poor bloggers when it comes to our font choices, though. That’s because there are some significant differences between the two operating systems when it comes to fonts, their names and appearances.
I’m sure some of you have already found this dilemma: you choose what you believe is the ideal font for the look, feel and personality of your site, only to discover that although it might look fabulous on a PC, it looks hideous or worse—unreadable—on a Mac.
Happily, there is a handy resource that can help you overcome this challenge. This page gives you an extensive list of fonts, and their names and appearances across both operating systems.
Now you can experiment to your heart’s content with a huge range of fonts that can be viewed similarly on both PC and Mac computers! You really can achieve the look you want and save yourself the stress of discovering that only one operating system can display it as you want.
Nice post. I use Trebuchet MS as the default font on my blog. It reads okay, I feel. I like the soft curves and feel to it. My second choice is Lucida Grande. Again, a little softer than Arial.
I only wish the bold as a little more substantial in both.
In terms of web-site/blog site designs, there are certainly issues surrounding what is appealing to both the writer and potential reader. At this point we are talking about style over substance!
Interestingly, I remember reading about how some historians were examing original manuscripts of authors before the days of wordprocessors to reveal the mood the writer was in. For example, suggesting that if a particular typewriter key had been hit harder than others the displayed font would reveal something!?
Hi Sarah,
Yeah it’s been fun for me. I relaunched recently, and chose the font Calibri, which is one of the new Vista/Office 2007 fonts. Now, I know full well most will not have it, so I made sure Trebuchet MS, the fallback font, would look good… at least as good as I could make it.
However I have copped a lot of heat from people when I tried to explain my reasoning behind the decision. Seems some people are VERY anti-MS and love any opportunity to say so
Cheers,
-Alister
…And I thought you took just the right approach, Alister. It wasn’t like you left non-Vista/Office 2007 users with garbage. I use both a Mac and a Vista laptop regularly and your redesign looks great in both… just slightly different.
I definitely feel that if you’re going to use an unusual font, you should pay attention to the fallback, just as you’ve done.