3 ms·

Futura is a nice typeface, I would argue, but it's not a very good body typeface. And the commenter who noted that (a) this is specifying the "light" weight rat

Futura is a nice typeface, I would argue, but it's not a very good body typeface. And the commenter who noted that (a) this is specifying the "light" weight rather than the regular weight is correct; that's just not a good choice for body text. The low contrast of #555 text on #FFF background compounds the problem. (That's technically a WCAG Level AAA-compliant contrast ratio, but at 7.45:1, just barely; I like lighter-than-pure-black text on darker-than-pure-white background, but I tend to aim for at least a 12:1 contrast ratio on a site I expect people to be, you know, reading lots of text on.) That commenter is also right that Futura PT is a commercial, closed-source font, which makes this entire thing rather moot until this is fixed. Also: if you're going to include custom typefaces, for the love of all that's holy, please include the italic and bold versions of the typeface if they exist and you expect users to use them. Letting browsers make fake bold is bad enough; letting them just slant text to make fake italics is eye-bleeding.

exergy 7y ago
What are some good body fonts though? I would prefer stuff that is available on Windows. It's an eternal problem I struggle with, until I throw in the towel and say 'fuck it, let the user decide' and just put 'sans-serif' as the attribute. That, or use Arial.
- chipotle_coyote 7y ago
  That's always subjective, which isn't a great answer. I never really liked sans serif fonts for body text, but there are a few that have convinced me otherwise -- off the top of my head, Fira Sans, Lato, Open Sans, and Source Sans Pro are all good, and all available on Google Fonts to boot. (If you don't want to have any downloaded fonts, you're kind of stuck with either really lowest common denominator stuff or doing a font stack and being okay with fonts changing a little depending on OS. Calibri and Candara are widely available on Windows, but hit-or-miss on Mac and virtually non-existent on Linux, for instance.)

exergy 7y ago

What are some good body fonts though? I would prefer stuff that is available on Windows. It's an eternal problem I struggle with, until I throw in the towel and say 'fuck it, let the user decide' and just put 'sans-serif' as the attribute. That, or use Arial.

chipotle_coyote 7y ago
That's always subjective, which isn't a great answer. I never really liked sans serif fonts for body text, but there are a few that have convinced me otherwise -- off the top of my head, Fira Sans, Lato, Open Sans, and Source Sans Pro are all good, and all available on Google Fonts to boot. (If you don't want to have any downloaded fonts, you're kind of stuck with either really lowest common denominator stuff or doing a font stack and being okay with fonts changing a little depending on OS. Calibri and Candara are widely available on Windows, but hit-or-miss on Mac and virtually non-existent on Linux, for instance.)