For example, Helvetica’s nuances work well on screen, when the text is large enough, while Helvetica Neue’s slightly wider letter forms read better at smaller sizes on screen. Is it going to be a headline, sub-head, or body copy? This can determine the appropriate order of a stack, considering certain fonts work well for setting blocks of copy, while others work better at larger sizes. When creating a stack, first consider the context of the text. I will say, though, that font stack are ultimately design factors, and should be scrutinized as such. I am not going to speculate, here, as to whose fault it is that typography on the web leaves much to be desired… there are probably as many culprits as there are offenses. This is an example of how lax typographic standards on the web are leading to poor design decision making.
For example, Dreamweaver’s defaults look like so:Īs you can see, there are not a whole lot of options, and the substitutes are often not appropriate. There seems to be a lack of consideration for the process of creating these stacks. Unfortunately, common web practices and/or technologies are not fully utilizing this functionality. Richard Rutter has already illustrated, there are quite an array of typefaces that may be sitting on your user’s machine ready to serve your design needs. This means that you can use Gill Sans, and if your users don’t have it, you can give them an adequate substitute that will not diminish their experience. Font stacks are prioritized lists of fonts, defined in the CSS font-family attribute, that the browser will cycle through until it finds a font that is installed on the user’s system. You want to use Gill Sans? Go right ahead. On top of that, CSS gives us a nice little thing called a font stack. While it is true that there are only a handful of web safe fonts, the ones we do have at our disposal can be quite powerful and diversely useful. One aspect of designing for the web that almost immediately offends designers is the lack of fonts that are considered safe to use.I have given it a home here, with permission and mostly unedited, because some of this is still very relevant. This piece was originally published on the Unit Interactive blog (original address now defunct: ).
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