5 Fonts to Improve your Documents
Have you ever written a proposal, report or business plan and stared at it thinking “Something’s missing”. Using the correct fonts goes a long way in creating engaging and legible documents that will keep your readers attention.
When selecting
fonts there are three important points to keep in mind: Consistency, Legibility,
and Aesthetic.
Consistency
The first thing
every document formatter does when fixing copy, is creating a consistent style throughout
the document. A good way
for non-designers
to get consistency is
using fonts with three or more font-weights. Font-weights are variants of the main
font with different line thickness. The most common font weights are Light, Regular,
Bold and Black. A font with multiple font-weights allows you to distinguish
Headings, Sub-headings and Body copy seamlessly.
Legibility
It is
important to choose a font that is legible. Having well-written and informative
copy is pointless if nobody can read or understand it. One way of checking a
fonts legibility is writing random words next to each other. This will help you
identify letter combinations that are hard to read.
Aesthetic
There are four types of fonts: Serif, Sans-serif, Script and Display. For the purpose of the previous point (Legibility), the fonts to use for your documents are serif and sans-serif. Aesthetically serif and san-serif fonts are interpreted differently. Serif fonts have decorative strokes at the ends of the letters lines. These decorative stroke give the impression of formality and professionalism which is necessary when creating documents for companies in law and financial industries. Sans-serif fonts do not have these decorative strokes and can go from modern to elegant to neutral. It is important to pick a font that matches the impression you want your company to give.
Here are the five fonts I recommend to improve your documents:
