I constatnly confuse the Serif family font and the Sans Serif family, because both their names and styles are very similar.
Serif fonts are defined as having tiny little “feet.” The font used in this post is under the Serif family because if you look at the bottom of most letters, there are lines going in both directions.
Some Serif fonts include old style, modern, transitional, and slab serif.
Sans Serif fonts are defined as not having the “feet” that are present in Serif fonts.
Some Sans Serif fonts include grotesque, neo-grotesque, humanist, and geometric.
There will be another series on examples of fonts in each of the font families listed above, but for now, is one better than the other in terms of online design?
Well for one, it is argued that some fonts are more readable than others. A post by freecodecamp.org says that Humanist fonts are more readable than Grotesque fonts because Humanist fonts contain more open shapes which makes it easier to read.
However, an article on designhack.net argues that Serif fonts aren’t harder to read than Sans Serif fonts because each letter in Serif fonts are more distinctive and easier for the eye to recognize.
As a beginner to online design I’ve noticed this seems to be a common theme among a lot of rules and guidelines to online design. Some people will argue one thing, but other people will argue the exact opposite. If I’ve learned one thing from this course it’s that there really are no rules, just like when you were a little kid in elementary school and were taught to never use and in the beginning of a sentence. And as you grew older you were told that actually a lot of the rules of writing that you were taught as a kid are actually just very loose guidelines, that aren’t followed strictly.
The same thing applies to online design. There really are no rules, and if you want to use Serif fonts online, you can. The article on designhack.net said that you can really do whatever you want in terms of design, you just have to make sure to do it well.
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