A friend of mine told me a while ago that he doesn’t particularly like Arial as a typeface. I’ve been pondering that ever since, because it’s my default font for this site. I just read an article that correlates font or typeface choice with better academic grades. Whether that’s right or not, I expect that I’ll get different reactions based on the look of the text on this page. So I have changed font for this blog to Trebuchet MS which is available on Windows and Mac. Second choice Verdana, then your default font for the sans-serif family.
Please let me know if you preferred the old Arial style, and I’ll switch it back. Or I could even make the font configurable with a dropdown menu, if you all feel strongly enough about it.
13/3/2006 at 10:55 am
My personal choice is always Tahoma. A good clean font and seems to get more words on a line than either Times New or Arial.
13/3/2006 at 10:13 am
Its always nice to be slightly different from the mainstream. I think the trebuchet looks very good for the main body text of the articles. Perhaps having it everywhere on the page means that a hierarchy of info is slightly difficult to achieve. Maybe you could put a different font face on the navigation aids ?
Have a look at http://www.lemonde.fr/ for a nice mix of fonts
Fella
13/3/2006 at 9:22 pm
Fella,
I reckon I’ll start expanding out to put headers in a different font for example. Will have to test some ideas, maybe titles in Georgia and article text in Trebuchet MS for example. Are you pleased to see the back of Arial?
Mum,
I don’t like Tahoma for the same reason you like it: more words on a line means that the space between letters is too small, and makes it difficult to read especially at small sizes. I did in fact try it for a few minutes and switched to Trebuchet MS because of legibility issues – and I’m on a big screen.
-Fruey
14/3/2006 at 10:23 am
OK well I have gone with Georgia or Serif on headers, and main text in Trebuchet MS. The hierarchy is clearer, nice tip Fella!
-Fruey
19/3/2006 at 6:37 pm
I read somewhere that Arial font appears more modern to people when you use it on resumes, cv’s etc…I am growing more accustomed to it as I am tired of the same old Times New Roman font which I use for just about everything.
Great Blog!
19/3/2006 at 8:06 pm
Hi Jeff,
Times New Roman, having been the default in MS Office Word since I can remember, does seem a bit tired; however it would still seem that serif fonts are taken a little more seriously than sans-serif fonts. Arial is more “modern” looking, but the article was related more specifically to academic disciplines.
Any font that tends towards a trend of being “hard to read” or “not professional” will indeed has some psychological effect on anyone who is reading your work for review. From there to say Arial won’t do the job is a tough question.
I’m still not sure, but I think changing the font here does at least bring a new typographical look to things.
Thanks for the compliment,
-Fruey