Fonts are very impornant. They set the mood. They guide the eye. But they are not the star of the show.
People often ask: “What font should I use?”
My answer is always the same: “For what?”
I’ve spent two decades setting type for longreads that stretched past 15,000 words, in five languages, and across six continents. I’ve watched heatmaps, eye-tracking, bounce rates — and let me say this: typography matters.
A lot. But...
Typography Isn’t a Frill, It’s the Path
Listen up: typography isn’t some optional flourish you slap on at the last minute. Pick the wrong font—say, Comic Sans for a longread about military conflict—and you don’t need to be a psychic to guess how that’s gonna end. End of story.
Meanwhile, over at Bloomberg, serious and very busy gentlemen drop $2,000 a month on the ugliest UI in the world, a terminal that runs on nobody-cares-what-family-font. Nobody’s begging for cursive serifs or novelty grotesque.
They need speed and clarity, not your designer ego on parade.
Because the content is too valuable to ignore.
That’s your real UX.
A bad font doesn’t just look bad. It feels irrelevant.
Font Rules
If you want to talk about font rules, you’re already in the same boat as all that nonsense about cramming everything “important” into the first viewport. Or the usual garbage like “no more than seven items,” “never mix more than two fonts,” “beware of clashing colors.” Long story short — these are rules made up by clowns for courses aimed at other clowns.
Cut it out. If your content is solid, people will scroll whether it’s front‑loaded or not. People will read it across hundred viewports if it’s worth it. And those who try to dress up weak content with curly fonts and “10 essential shocking titles…” — those are the folks who’ve never read a book without a clickbait title.
Clean the Noise
Here’s the deal: good typography isn’t a trend—it’s a discipline. Want to make your interface addictive?
This is a guide:
- Strip out the noise,
- Lock your grid,
- Nail your margins and leading,
- Let hierarchy guide the eye,
- Make the essentials pop and bury the rest,
- Watch your data fly off the page
People scroll — if they trust you. And trust isn’t built by flash. It’s built by interest, clarity, and rhythm. Good typography is invisible.
At the end of the day, content is king.
And typography is the throne.
In every type of content, importance is never obvious. Seek the important; highlight the interesting; everything else is noise.
Your job isn’t to impress or show off; it’s to serve the story. Get that right, and your readers won’t even notice the typeface—they’ll just keep reading.
* Bonus Tip: Every solution has a downside. Learn to think about harm, not just benefit. A flashy fix can backfire.