Font mistakes that are costing you big time

>> Virgil: [intro music plays] What is the reason your website's there in the first place? If it's there just to entertain yourself, then go crazy and do all the crap you want. But if it's there actually for other people to get something out of it, why make it more difficult to read? [sleigh bells jingleing] Hi, everybody, and welcome back to the podcast. as always, I'm your host, Virgil Carroll, and with me today is

>> Chad: Chad Heinle

>> Cole: and Cole Schlotthauer from High Monkey

>> Virgil: Yeah. All right, guys. Well, it's Christmas time in that it looks like we're all celebrating the holidays. Everybody should probably do a fit check, make sure that everybody can see that in there. So I love yours, Chad. The Gingerbread running team. That's a pretty creative thing.

>> Chad: As long as the legs stay intact, it'll be fine.

>> Virgil: Yeah. And today we have with us an elf.

>> Cole: Yeah, you know, at least I thought it was an elf hat when I bought it, last night, but it kind of looks more like a green Santa hat

>> Virgil: It looks like an elf hat.

>> Cole: Yeah. But look at this. [pushes button on hat that triggers blinking lights]

>> Chad: Oh, wow. Put you up on a, ah, four way intersection, let you guide some traffic around.

>> Virgil: Okay. Yeah, you, might have to wear that on Christmas day to impress all your family.

>> Cole: You know, I think I will probably avoid doing that because they would make fun of me.

>> Virgil: Nice, well, speaking of the Christmas spirit and everything that goes along about it, what are we going to talk about that's stupid today?

>> Cole: You know, so see, guys, first I want to say Chad's a very busy man, but, when he heard the topic of today's episode, he just could not resist joining us. And the topic-

>> Virgil: Wait are you trying to say I'm not busy? Am I, like, sitting around bored?

>> Cole: Well, we're all busy. But, you know, Chad, you know, he's, on a two episode hiatus. I believe that's, the case currently. So just want to welcome Chad back.

>> Chad: Thank you. Thank you.

>> Virgil: Very important.

>> Cole: Yep, indeed. But the topic that we will be talking about today is when fonts go wrong. Font mistakes that are costing you big time. Yep. And so to kind of kick off the episode here, the first thing I want to bring up is kind of a, common problem that I tend to see on websites regarding fonts. And it is that a lot of websites use way too many of them. And, you know, I just want to first ask Chad, like, what is up, with that? Why? What's going through people's minds when they put so many fonts on website?

>> Chad: You know, there's probably a couple things that come to mind right away. And number one is just availability. You know, Google Fonts is great. You get a large variety of free fonts that you can use, you just plug a little code in your website and all of a sudden you've got access to all these possible fonts you can have.

>> Cole: Right

>> Chad: But that's somewhat of the problem is you can just kind of do it. There's nothing holding you back. There's no licensing, restrictions that I can think of off the top of my head, knock, on wood. but it's, you know, it's just the availability is there. and when you don't always have to pair that with, ah, ah, brand styles or corporate guidelines or anything like that, it's just all right there for you to use. and it's easy to do. It's really not difficult to grab those and put them on if you know what you're doing. and you know, the other, the other.

>> Virgil: Well, you know, one thing I want to throw in there, just kind of on top of that is even if you are following some kind of corporate brand in that a lot of times brands are kind of made with a lot of different fonts and a lot of different characteristics and that kind of stuff. And I mean, even when I, when I speak on user experience, I kind of talk about, you know, if you ever want to see the way like to like lay out a web page or something like that, you know, look at the way magazines do it because they do a really great job of like fitting a ton of information on a single page and yet making it all broken up and kind of look like it. But the one thing that's kind of funny is a lot of people interpret that as, you know, oh, well, then I should use a lot of different fonts. But if you actually look at most magazines or like a newspaper and stuff that they use like two in that they use something for the headers and that kind of stuff

>> Cole: And they do that effectively.

>> Virgil: Yeah, yeah, they do it very well. And, and that's kind of the problem is people kind of look at it and it's like, oh, well, this would look really cool here. And then I need a fancy thing over here and that. And they think that they're kind of mimicking a pattern that actually doesn't exist out there. What those print mediums have done is they've actually become professionals at using minimal things, but using layout techniques to kind of give different impacts there too.

>> Chad: Well, I'll tack on to that too that, you know, I remember from my college days I went to school for graphic design. and one of our surprising. Right. It's been a while, one of the classes that we had was a typography, in design class. So it was all about using fonts much more creatively than you would for just something readable. So I think that too is, it gets, maybe they get used for artistic reasons rather than practical readable, content purposes. And that's, you know, in taking those more artistic fonts and creating and adding them into your other fonts, to try to make something that they shouldn't be used for.

>> Virgil: Yeah. I always think another interesting aspect, I mean you take the Google Fonts but the other thing that we're starting to see a lot is a lot more Typekit fonts from Adobe. And we actually know that those absolutely kill performance on websites and that. But again, you kind of have to wonder again because those are integrated directly in the Adobe projects, you know, AI and you know, Photoshop and those kind of things. And you, you kind of have to look at that and wonder if it's just, well, it's there, I can use it. So I use it. And they don't really think of the impact. And that's where, you know, how many times have we dealt in the past with projects where you could tell that there was a complete disconnect with what a designer's vision was and what the realities of delivering it on the web. Even though there's a lot better ways of doing things on the web, sometimes doing things at designers pixel perfect, you know, the ways they want it, I mean it's still kind of crazy and doesn't from a user experience standpoint, doesn't really add anything. It's really more of them wanting this to show this way versus really anything there being like that has like this huge impact on the person visiting the site in that. And that's something that I think a lot of marketers forget all the time. And yeah, when we look at performance, what is one of the first things we usually look at is how are you loading fonts? And that's usually one of the first things that comes up that you're, you've either got too many or, or you're loading a, Typekit type font or you're loading all the different variables of the font and you're only using like bold or you're only using normal and that. And yet you're loading everything in. There are just a lot of things that go along there.

>> Cole: Okay, I gotta ask so we've talked about using a lot of fonts and, you know, loading a lot of fonts and stuff, but I'm really dying to know. do you guys, I kind of want to shift it to like bad fonts, like some, you know, not readable fonts. Do you guys think any fonts should be outright banned from being used?

>> Virgil: Cursive!

>> Chad: Look, I think in, you know, we had talked about what this episode was going to be about, and I had a thought too. There's a difference between a medical professional website or e commerce website that's reaching thousands of people and your sports fantasy website, your football fantasy, football league website, or your.

>> Virgil: Hey, hey, I gotta stop you right there. My team is terrible this year. Please do not.

>> Chad: Okay, how about we'll go nerdier and we'll say your Dungeons and Dragons group website. or your college club website. So there's a time and a place for a lot of fonts. and I think the biggest thing with that is just knowing what the purpose of your site is and how many people it's going to reach. Is it a giant site that's going to reach lots of people? You should be using more readable, common, serif and sans serif type fonts. You know, go back to the classics. Otherwise, if you want your. I'll skip the fantasy football one and go, we'll go fantasy, I don't know, fantasy hockey? Is that a thing?

>> Cole: Probably yeah

>> Chad: I'm sure there's a hockey themed font out there for your website, or a medieval font for your Dungeons and Dragons website, or your cursive fonts for a birthday invitation website or whatever. So there's, there's a lot of fonts for a reason and they're, they're usable. But it's, it's knowing, I think, when to use them and where to use them.

>> Virgil: And I'm gonna add on there how to use them. I mean, you know, there are fonts, there are very decorative fonts that work really well if you use as very large. Otherwise people have a lot of visual space to be able to separate the letters and kind those. I mean, even in cursive, I make a joke, but there, there are scenarios where you could use a cursive type font and actually make some type of visual impact from there. But again, we all know that if you use that as like normal font size, you know, like 16, 18 pixel or something like that, it's going to be completely unreadable to most people. But if you're Using it in very large, like H 1, like 64 pixels, there is. So, so there's also the usage in what they're, they're doing with it in that. And you know, one of the funny things about bad fonts is really what is the reason your website's there in the first place? If it's there just to entertain yourself, then go crazy and do all the crap you want. But if it's there actually for other people to get something out of it, why make it more difficult to read? I mean, we all know through 30, some years of the Internet existing that San Serif fonts are just easier to read. We know that for a fact. Yet you still see sites out there that have tons of text on a page that use a serif fonts like Times New Roman or something like that, that just visually, they see it in, you know, and I'll go back to the newspaper analogy. That's a very common font in newspapers and they interpret that to it. But you know, again, if you're supposed to be building this for somebody else, that's not you...

>> Cole: Keep them in mind.

>> Virgil: Keep them in mind. Or we can just say KISS - Keep It Simple, Stupid.

>> Cole: Keep It Simple, Stupid. Yep, totally agree. So how many fonts you think should be on a website like ballpark?

>> Chad: Well, and I, Virgil touched on it earlier with the print too. As best you can, a headline and a body.

>> Cole: We did mention two.

>> Chad: Yeah, well, he mentioned it with print, but yeah, it's, you know, but there's variations inside those. Right. You can have various font weights for, various purposes. So if you have a, ah, large header that you want as a really bold and one font, but a smaller header in the same font, you don't want, maybe want that one as bold, so you can use a lighter font weight, and that goes for the content too. Again, you don't want to go crazy. but you can use those variations within those fonts to create those popping design elements, that get some more impact and more visual separation, without having to change the readability level of them.

>> Virgil: Yeah, and I think that again, you kind of have to look at the impact and why you're doing something and part of that is, you know, from there. And so what really needs to happen is that when you have your graphic designers out there in the world building these things, you need to be focused on these aspects of it. It's just like images, you know, where we've talked about in previous episodes, about too many images and all that kind of really just too much stuff. I mean, performance is such a key part of search, engine optimization, (SEO) today that this should really be forefront in people's mind. And sometimes, like we said, that designer vision doesn't always interpret well into what the, user journey is and what they're trying to do. And we just have to understand that stuff. But I would agree with Chad. I think two, is the max you want. I mean, and you'd need to have quite an argument to be three because you're adding kind of a difference in there that you just have to figure out why that's necessary.

>> Cole: Yep. So kind of key takeaways here: keep your font selection simple, use readable fonts, and just in general, keep the people who are going to be using and reading your fonts, keep them in mind.

>> Virgil: Yeah, yeah. So, and that. All right, well, guys, I think this was a fun one. It's a great time and a great topic for the Christmas holiday or whatever holiday you may celebrate in that. Thanks again for joining me for this. As we wrap up, I guess our fifth episode, but our last episode of 2024, and then we'll be going into 2025.

>> Cole: Indeed!

>> Virgil: All right, guys, thanks very much. [sleigh bells jingleing] [outro music plays]

>> Virgil: Just a reminder, we'll be dropping new episodes every two weeks. If you enjoyed the discussion today, we would appreciate it if you hit the like button and leave us a review or comment below. And to listen to past episodes or be notified when future episodes are released, visit our website at www.discussingstupid.com and sign up for our email updates. Not only will we share when each new episode drops, but also we'll be including a ton of good content to help you in Discussing Stupid in your own organization. Of course, you can also follow us on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or SoundCloud, or really any of the other favorite podcast platforms you might use. Thanks again for joining and we'll see you next time. [outro music fades]