General-purpose fonts for beginners?

Question

I'm a programmer and a beginner in graphic design. When learning design, I found it very hard for me to decide which font to use in my website. In fact, when viewing separately(i.e. not in a side-by-side view), I think most fonts are identical to each other!

I've browsed many examples, only to found that their CSS font stacks tend to contain 4 or more fonts, which effectively overwhelms me, and presumably other starters.

So, I'm asking for some recommendations here: is there any any general-purpose font which can be used by design beginners safely? Here, "safe" means "not making a website ridiculously ugly or illegible".

To make my question more specific, the font I'm looking for should be:

1. Free to use.
2. General-purpose. It must be (at least partially) suitable to most projects.
3. Web safe. Ideally it should have already been installed on most devices.
4. Novel. Classic fonts, such as (Sans) Serif, are nice, but they are used at so many places that users are starting to get bored with them.

Answer 1

Before giving you a specific font recommendation, I'll give you some things to look for in a font if you want it to become your go-to font.

• It should be legible. Look for a font that works well in a variety of sizes and weights, in black over white and iverse.
• It should come in a variety of styles- look for a family that has several weights, widths, that has italics. This will give you versatility of having contrast for titles or interface elements within the same family. If you find a family that has both sans-serif and serif, so much better
• It should be fairly neutral This goes against what you talk about in point number 4, but the more "personality"/novelty a font has, the more likely it is that it will not be suitable for some projects

That being said, let me recommend a few families that fit these criteria:

Open Sans Hardly original, but it is a great family, with lots of weights, good language support, even a narrow version.

Source Sans Pro Amazing typeface, especially for interface design, also has a companion serif font

Roboto Quite sober, but super legible font, with lots of variations and again, a matching serif

Answer 2

At first I thought it was a simple question. It is not. It is a good fundamental one.

I do not remember who said that is better to master the use of a few fonts, than to simply use a ton of them... That is not the actual quote... It seems that I did remember the quote either Xo)

Classical classification

First you need to understand the categories fonts are divided into. That would be a long answer, so you need to do some homework. https://www.google.com/search?q=font+categories

But in general there are some elements that define this categories:

• The serif (or lack of it)

• The difference (or lack of) between vertical and horizontal strokes

• The overall shape (circular, squared, oval)

• The style... (oh god, this is too board... Decorative... let us leave this alone for a while)

One classical set of "book fonts" categories is

• Old Style (Roman old style)

• Modern

• Slab serif (Egyptian)

• Humanist

• Sans serif

Variations

By how thin the font is and how thin the stroke is:

• Extended, Normal, Condensed

• Bold, Normal, Thin

• And a lot of variations on some cases. Extra, ultra, black...

Decorative ones

One personal way to arrange "script" fonts is:

• Manuscript (Stylish fonts with thin lines, simulating the use of a soft calligraphic pen)

• Hand writing (Architect type)

• Historical (Medieval, celtic, "textura", pre-Gutenberg)

• Calligraphy

• Brush strokes

In a practical sense

1) Sans serif

Choose let us say just 9 Sans serif fonts. A good option is to choose one that has variations of weight (all the variations count as one) 3 for each category (You can repeat the same font on different categories).

• Some that looks good on menus. Normally I choose one condensed here, so the menu can have a little more text.

• Some for text, one would be verdana, and choose another two.

• For titles, one very rounded and circular at least.

2) Serif

For web concentrate more just in titles.

• Two Old Style

• Two modern

• Two Slab

3) Humanist

This works on long and small texts. There are not many to choose from. Choose just 2.

Be ready to have a long collection of Script fonts

But only collect them as the project requires it. Do not waste your time if you do not have a specific case.

Regarding your requirements

Just stick to the google fonts.

And I agree that "Novel" and "General Purpose" are contradictory terms. But I stated that on my "classifications" of fonts.

Answer 3

DMCA Sans Serif is the general-purpose typeface. Version 9.0 has 3309 characters and 32 styles. It also has a subreddit, github issues section and a discord.