Polish is to Shoe, as Detail is to Website - Times New Roman Font is Default for Text. No Way?
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How about we change gears and start talking about something that I’m sure you thought did not matter to how your website looked. Yes, we're going to briefly discuss the myths about text and how it's underestimated. I mentioned above that the layout is the first detail to capture your visitor’s emotions, negative or positive. Your text may not be the second detail to capture you visitor’s second emotion, but it might as well be.
When I see a website that has a perfect graphical layout but bad text formatting such as the default font: Times New Roman, I think, "Come on!" If you're going to have text…dress it up! You have to sell your site to your visitor; don’t use a plain default text that they see everywhere. A variety of fonts come pre-installed on Windows. There is no way you'll understand if I just tell you how it makes a difference, so I’ve added two screen shots of my company website below. In figure 5-1 I have a screen shot with horrible text formatting (purposely) to show you how poorly formatted text can take away from how the graphical layout it is meant to look.
FIGURE 5-1: Here I show you my VERY NICE graphical layout which stimulates the user's first emotion; however as they begin to read the text their subconscious is screaming out at them “The text is horrible, what in the world, there are 6 different fonts on the page, this is unacceptable and too hard to read! It’s playing tricks on my mind. STOP IT! Just stop it!"
Figure 5-1 is unacceptable. It includes so many things you shouldn't use! For example: fonts that are hard to read are used, six different fonts are being used, and some areas use the default font, which can show lazy habits or give a visitor a negative emotion. I should mention that it is all right to use Times New Roman if your website looks good with it. However, 90% of the time Times New Roman only looks good in MLA Formatted Research Papers.
Now I will show you the same company website with perfect text formatting. Below is Figure 5-2, notice how sleek the text is. Two fonts (however different sizes) are used throughout the whole website. Both fonts complement each other and are very easy on the eyes.
FIGURE 5-2: Using similar fonts throughout the website shows professionalism and consistency. Notice how all fonts complement each other. Do you see the difference?
I hope you notice the point I’m trying to get you to notice. Text formatting is very important. It can make or break a graphical layout. That is why it is important not to practice all your skills in Photoshop and ignore your HTML, because every detail must complement each and every other detail.
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