What font shall I use?
So we know why readability is important for effective writing and presenting, and we know that you should choose your font carefully, but you must admit there is a baffling array of fonts and typefaces available. (Just to be a little bit geeky about this, a Font is a complete set of characters in a particular size and style of type. For example, Arial Narrow is one font, Arial Black is another – Arial is the Typeface – the collection of fonts). Even just to scroll through all the fonts available on your computer could take ages and it isn’t always obvious what they’re going to look like anyway. If you feel that you are wasting too much of your life on that particular exercise, take a look at wordmark.it.
You simply type in the word or word string you want and it displays, on one screen, the words styled in all the fonts available to your computer. Once found, it’s one of those things you didn’t realise you couldn’t live without!
One thing to note though is that although you may find the perfect font, once you read the small print it might be that that font is only available for ‘personal use’. This can be a huge frustration if you’re looking to use it commercially. One of our readers though has thankfully found a solution – this very handy article: 70+ Best Free Fonts for Designers – Free for Commercial Use in 2019. Thanks Fabi Castro for sharing with the rest of us!
