Attorney website design tip: when it comes to your font, keep it simple!

If you are spending time and money on a new or redesigned website, you might want to jazz things up with a unique font. We hear this, too, when we're working on websites for our clients - they'll ask, "can't I have a more interesting font?" Let's answer that this way: if you want to be unique, find another way to do it.

Font selection: think WEB SAFE

When it comes time to select fonts for your website, stick to the basics. Why? You can pick an exciting, fancy font for your website, but it will not show up on the majority of web user's machines. When your website loads on a web visitor's computer, it can only display the fonts that they have installed. If they don't have that funky new font you picked installed, it won't show up and your site may not display correctly. Not exactly the great first impression you want to give your prospective clients, is it?

Key point: if you want your website to display correctly on the largest number of computers, use a "web-safe" font.

List of web-safe fonts

Most common, easiest to use fonts:

1. Georgia
2. Trebuchet MS

Alternate fonts:

1. Arial
2. Arial Black, Arial Black
3. Courier New
4. Lucida Sans Unicode (Lucida Grande for Macs)
5. Palatino Linotype (Book Antiqua for Macs)
6. Tahoma (Geneva for Macs)
7. Times New Roman
8. Verdana
9. Symbol
10. Webdings
11. Wingdings, Zapf Dingbats

Fonts that may have issues in Safari (Mac browser) in bold or italic:

1. Comic Sans MS
2. Impact
3. Lucida Console (Monaco for Macs)

Bitmap fonts designed for 8, 10, 12, 14, 18 and 24 point sizes at 96 DPI:

1. MS Sans Serif (Geneva for Macs)
2. MS Serif (New York for Macs)

The bottom line is that if you're looking for an innovative, creative website there is a lot you can do with content - written and video - to impress your site visitors . So do yourself a favor, pick a simple font and let the informative, unique and focused content on your site lure in your visitors. We've never picked a business partner based on their website font, and your clients won't either.