21 fonts every graphic designer should own (2024)

FAQs

How many fonts should you use in graphic design? ›

✅ DO: Limit yourself to only 2 or 3 fonts. ✅ DO: Use fonts that are easy to read, especially when the font size is small. ✅ DO: Choose complementary fonts that don't clash. ✅ DO: Periodically perform A/B testing to determine how certain fonts affect user behavior on your website.

This fact made Helvetica a really popular font for any kind of graphic design project and you can see it on tons of logo designs, some of them are BMW, Panasonic, Jeep, Lufthansa, General Motors, Microsoft, American Airlines, Toyota and the list goes.

A great rule of thumb is to use three different fonts or font weights. This lets you have one font or weight for headers, one for body text, and one for the occasional accent text. There are many fonts available to us nowadays, including many free fonts on sites like Google Fonts or Font Squirrel.

In general, you should only use a maximum of three fonts per design: the title, the subhead, and the body of the text. You get an exception if your design text is long.

The first rule of typography is to minimize the number of typefaces and fonts being used throughout your site. Getting carried away with various fonts and sizes is easy to do, especially when trying to distinguish pieces of information for your reader.

Recommended serif fonts include Cambria, Georgia, and Times New Roman. Sans serif fonts don't have small strokes attached to their letters, giving them a cleaner and more modern style. Some recommended sans serif fonts include Arial, Calibri, and Verdana.

1. Helvetica. Helvetica is a widely used sans-serif typeface initially designed in 1957 by Swiss designer Max Miedinger. It is known for its clean, modern, and minimal design and has become one of the world's most popular and widely used typefaces.

How many fonts should a website use? A website should keep the number of fonts to a minimum—no more than three in total.

Sans-Serif Fonts

These fonts fit seamlessly into “everyday designs” across a range of industries, from sports brands to tech companies. Futura, Univers and Helvetica are popular sans-serif typefaces. If you are looking for open-source alternatives, consider Roboto, Open Sans, Source Sans Pro or Inter.

Having too many fonts will mildly slow down certain things (text editors, or font selection panels with previews, would be most impacted), while other things would feel almost nothing (stuff that hardcodes which font is to be used; the mild slowdown comes from the actual file access being slower due to the directory ...

What font is unprofessional? ›

Comic sans

It's the brunt of a lot of jokes for good reason. It tries to be casual, but just comes off as sloppy, not to mention horrendously dated.

Realistically, there's no reason to use more than three fonts, in any piece of design (not just the web) that's it, no more, sorry. One for your headings and one for body copy. When you add in bold and italics we're already looking at 4 variants of each, so that's more than enough to play with.

One of the most important tips to remember when creating a cohesive design is to select no more than two or three fonts for your project. Using too many different fonts for different sections of the design will distract and confuse the reader.

Use programs like Adobe Type Manager or Bitstream Font Navigator to browse fonts and create font groups. Expect to run into installation problems with 800-1000 or more installed fonts. Aim for 500 or fewer fonts.