Dee Calder Website

• Home
• Resources
• DW Neat Thing
• Contact

• Fonts
• Image Use
• Layouts
• Content/Writing
• Design Theory

Fonts & Typography

There are two general categories of font; serif and sans serif.  Serif fonts have little ‘hooks’ (also referred to as dingbats) on the ends of characters.  New Times Roman is a common serif font.  The hooks associated with serif fonts are to aid the reader in scanning text along the horizontal plane.  This is particularly helpful when reading a newspaper.  While serif fonts are beneficial in the print world, studies have shown that people reading text on a screen do not derive any benefit from these fonts.  With this in mind, many web developers opt for the cleaner, simpler appearance of sans serif fonts such as Arial (Microsoft Windows) or Helvetica (Mac OS).  Selecting sans serif fonts is one step a web designer can take in giving a page a clean, modern appearance.  In addition, with san serif fonts being simpler in appearance (no dingbats to clutter things up), a web designer can select smaller fonts sizes thus allowing more text in the same area.