Web typography

Typography on the web has come on tremendously in the last few years. It was once necessary to limit yourself to system fonts. Then, when custom fonts were made viable, a bevy of different file types was required to satisfy all the competing file implementations.

Mercifully, things have now pretty much settled on .woff and the newer .woff2. In addition, we have more control over the particulars of our fonts in CSS, and new variable fonts, which we will cover momentarily, are popping up on a monthly basis.

If some of that introduction was lost on you, fear not. Let’s try to get through the current state of the art in web typography.

First, however, let’s talk about system fonts, as they represent the best-performing web typography choice you can opt for.

System fonts

Each operating system has its own set of fonts that come pre-installed. However, aside from a few exceptions, there aren’t many fonts you can rely upon to be installed...