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This is probably a hot take, but I think custom fonts are self-serving for the web developer and for 99% of cases, not a benefit to the user. Most people who us

This is probably a hot take, but I think custom fonts are self-serving for the web developer and for 99% of cases, not a benefit to the user. Most people who use Google Fonts hotlink to Google which means you're sending information about your users' IP and fingerprint, URL visited, and timestamp they went to your page to them. Even when done right, users just don't care or notice them, and would probably rather have a faster pageload, less bandwidth use, and no flicker (FOUT, as noted by the article). I'm a fan of the native font stack approach [1] that Bootstrap now uses, and is used by Wordpress and Medium. The idea is to have a long font stack that opts for the operating system font (like Segue UI for Windows, San Francisco for Mac, Roboto for Android, etc.), which is modernly beautiful, loads instantly, and fits with the users' native application. [1] https://css-tricks.com/snippets/css/system-font-stack/ https://css-tricks.com/snippets/css/system-font-stack/

httpsterio 6y ago
Fonts do play a role with branding that isn't just for the designers. regular consumers also notice and feel the differences in different typefaces, although they might not be able to express that in words. I personally don't like Google and I have used the system default font stack, but it only fits some use cases. On a personal site I added a custom font that weighs a whopping 11kb to give it a very different feel.
trungdq88 6y ago
The native font stack is absolutely fantastic, at least it is in 2020. I used to think that a custom font is a must to have a "professional" website and to escape the bore of Time New Roman. When I first used the native font stack for a new website I set up [1], I was surprised that it looks very nice on all devices! Without any additional network requests or CSS hacks to load the fonts. 1: https://devutils.app https://devutils.app
innocenat 6y ago
I think for most language, the native font stack is fine. However, for some language (e.g. Thai), the native font stack is very hideous especially at large font size.

httpsterio 6y ago

Fonts do play a role with branding that isn't just for the designers. regular consumers also notice and feel the differences in different typefaces, although they might not be able to express that in words. I personally don't like Google and I have used the system default font stack, but it only fits some use cases. On a personal site I added a custom font that weighs a whopping 11kb to give it a very different feel.

trungdq88 6y ago

The native font stack is absolutely fantastic, at least it is in 2020. I used to think that a custom font is a must to have a "professional" website and to escape the bore of Time New Roman. When I first used the native font stack for a new website I set up [1], I was surprised that it looks very nice on all devices! Without any additional network requests or CSS hacks to load the fonts. 1: https://devutils.app https://devutils.app

innocenat 6y ago

I think for most language, the native font stack is fine. However, for some language (e.g. Thai), the native font stack is very hideous especially at large font size.