So I’ve been ashamed of my freelancer site for a while now…the content flows, the colors are appropriate for my industry, it’s bright and inviting but still professional–but I’ve still been contemplating ditching the whole theme and starting from scratch…over fonts.
I avoided visiting my own site because I hated seeing the robotic, strangely-spaced, hard to read words…words that were samples of the work I do. I knew, looking at my services page, that they had to be turning people off–I don’t do website design, but I do content strategy, so annoying content isn’t going to fly, period.
I took a step back though and realized that, inability to use bulleted lists aside, I could avoid the gut-wrenching process of looking for, installing, and tweaking a new theme by installing some new fonts.
Your Options
First off, you’ve got lots of options when it comes to adding new and interesting fonts to your site. Here’s an article explaining some, but I took the easy way out with a plugin.
This is one of the upsides of self-hosting a WordPress site…you have more flexibility and when you need to make a small change, you have a world of plugins (some of which are better than others) to choose from. I ended up using this one, Easy Google Fonts…it has really high ratings, lots of reviews, and Google Fonts gives you a lot of options. There are other plugins that give you access to Google Fonts, but I haven’t tested any yet.
If you want to use the same plugin, check out this video for a walk-through on installation and use.
Choosing Your Fonts
Picking your fonts is about more than finding ones you like. Different fonts pair for different moods and change readability (i.e. serif fonts are generally better for long blocks of text and sans-serif for headings).
I ended up using this site that suggests pairings, but Type Genius is pretty commonly used too.
Results
I settled on open sans and Francois one. My site looks the same, but is so much easier to read and has a more modern feel now.
So if you’re looking for a simple and free way to improve your site, take some time to pick out some fonts and play around. It’ll be worth the time.
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Megan.
Great article. In addition to Google Fonts; Typekit also has a wordpress plugin for generating fonts. If you add one simple line of code into the head section you can use Adobe Web Fonts. It is also possible to use any fonts you want via Font Squirrel and the CSS3 font-face method.
I’ve never played with Adobe Web fonts…might have to give it a shot once I get a little brave…haha