To Serif or to Sans Serif

After spending this week reviewing blogs and e-portfolio sites, I decided to do my blog on font choice. The key to proper font choice is knowing your audience. I don’t mean your audience’s gender, race, age or nationality. I mean you need to know whether your audience will be reading your text online or in hard copy format. There is a difference in how we read online content versus hard copy and font choice has a lot to do with making both experiences more enjoyable…and readable.

It is a common practice in the documentation world that serif fonts, elements at the end of the strokes known as feet, are used for hard copy and sans serif, without serif – or ‘feet’, is better for online use.

Source: dev.opera.com

Note:  this is important to know for resume writing. You will want to create your resume using a font that is good for online reading, however, you may want to change it for the actual hard copy you take with you to the interview. I will cover more on this when I do my resume writing blog.
Here are a few guidelines for making a good font choice:

1. Avoid using serif and sans serif fonts in the same document. It does not present well. Usually something just looks wrong. See what I mean?
2. Avoid using too many fonts on one page. Attempts to be creative by using multiple fonts on the same page or in the same document usually have the opposite effect. If it necessary to use multiple fonts in the same document, try using different fonts within the same family, such as Arial, Arial Black, Arial Narrow, Arial Bold, and Arial Rounded. Your end result will be much cleaner.
3. Most fonts will never be used and probably should not. They may be fun to look at, but more often than not, they are difficult to read.
4. Be careful when choosing fonts for a document being sent via email or being edited by someone on a different computer. If you do not use a default font, and the recipient does not have your font loaded, it will be replaced and may lose its formatting, or just look bad.
5. The same goes for any document being uploaded or downloaded, like a resume. Use a basic, default font, for the online version.

Take a look at this site for additional information on font choice. Please note that there are three other links, located in the menu on the left side. Be sure to read all of them, especially Font Features.

Believe it or not, there is an interesting film about fonts, Helvetica a Documentary film by Gary Hustwit. Check it out.

A word to the wise is sufficient.