From fonts to function: mapping web typography trends and challenges

What is web typography?

Typography on the internet has come a long way from the early days of limited fonts and clunky user interfaces. Today, web fonts are an integral part of design, influencing how users interact with websites, how content is consumed, and how brands are perceived. As web design continues to evolve, so does the role of fonts, with new trends, technologies, and practices emerging to meet the growing demand for both aesthetic and functional digital experiences.

A Brief History of Web Fonts

In the early days of the internet, web typography was constrained by the availability of “web-safe” fonts—those widely installed across most users' systems—like Arial, Times New Roman, and Courier. This limitation was necessary to ensure consistent rendering across different browsers and operating systems. Using an unrecognized font could mean the text appeared wrong or illegible, or not at all. However, it stifled creativity, as designers were unable to use unique fonts that matched their personal or brand’s identity.

The turning point came in 2010 with the introduction of the Web Open Font Format (WOFF), which allowed fonts to be embedded directly into web pages and meant that all fonts could appear consistently. This was further advanced by the same-year launch of Google Fonts, which provided designers and developers with free access to hundreds of font families. The adoption of these technologies revolutionized web typography, enabling designers to go beyond the basic, “safe” options and experiment with more diverse and expressive typefaces.

Statistics on Web Font Usage

With Dataprovider.com’s proprietary tech, we can detect fonts on a website by looking at a CSS property named ‘font-family’. We collect all the values of this property, and the resulting list contains all the fonts specified in the stylesheet(s) on that particular website. This doesn’t necessarily mean all of them are in use, but it gives a good idea of the fonts found most commonly across the web. 

Let’s take a look behind the scenes: for our sample, we exclusively focus on business, e-commerce and content websites, omitting placeholders and parked domains. In Figure 1, we show the top 10 fonts used on websites as of October 2024. Font Awesome is the overall winner, which, for the typography folks, might be disappointing as it isn’t really a letter-based font. Font Awesome is a standalone resource widely used for adding visual elements like social media logos, navigation icons, and user interface elements without relying on traditional image files. This aside, Open Sans is then the actual winner when we just look at letter-based typography. Roboto, Helvetica Neue, and Montserrat rank third, fourth, and fifth in our top 10.

For those interested in the fonts that are less commonly used, you can explore the word cloud in Figure 2—the smaller the word, the rarer the font. 

Next, we take a look at the most commonly used web fonts by country, as seen in Figure 3, and website category, shown in Table 1. There is limited variation overall, with certain fonts showing regional preferences: the Helvetica font is widely used on Canadian websites, Roboto is popular in Russia, and unsurprisingly, Noto Sans KR is the top choice in South Korea.

Our analysis reveals distinct font preferences across different website categories. In Table 1 we see that websites focused on Art & Design and Media content predominantly use Helvetica Neue, more than any other category. This could be because artists, designers, and media professionals are more likely to create their own icons and visual elements than those in other industries who rely on tools like Font Awesome. In contrast, sites with religious content tend to favor Open Sans as their top choice. Meanwhile, Microsoft YaHei emerges as the most commonly used font on adult-themed websites.

Taken together, our analysis shows that even though there is a wide variety of fonts available across the web, there is surprisingly little variation on a global scale. When it comes to the most commonly used fonts, Open Sans, Roboto, and Helvetica are popular choices no matter the content or cultural background. Font Awesome—although not strictly a font—has universally emerged as the go-to tool for displaying visual content on websites. 

Taking Brand Identity Online

We found that some fonts stood out due to their strong association with specific brands, many of which have developed proprietary typefaces. Just as in the physical world, many brands have created digital versions of their custom fonts. For instance, Chanel uses a proprietary font that appears as AB Chanel Couture online. However, custom typography isn't limited to fashion houses: Amazon employs Amazon Ember, DHL uses a font called Delivery, and the financial company Bradesco has its very own Bradesco typeface.

Proprietary fonts are especially popular among car manufacturers, such as Bentley and MINI. Audi takes online branding further, not only by using a custom font, but also providing its dealerships in Germany with ".audi" domain websites, offering a fully branded digital experience.

The Power of Fonts: Visual Hierarchy and Readability

Fonts play a crucial role in establishing a website's visual hierarchy, readability, and overall aesthetic. Typography affects users’ first impressions of a site and influences their behavior as they navigate through content. Font choices can guide the user’s eye to key elements or distract them, potentially leading to higher bounce rates if the text is difficult to read or the layout is cluttered.

One of the most significant challenges in web typography is balancing style with readability. Designers must consider font size, line height, and letter spacing, as well as the font's overall style, to ensure that text is easy to read across different screen sizes. Yet, accurately measuring legibility is difficult as factors such as type size, line spacing, line length, and typestyle, to name a few, interact in complex ways.

Accessibility remains a major issue, with nearly 96% of websites failing basic accessibility standards. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) recommend readable fonts, adequate contrast ratios, and scalable text sizes.

Responsive typography, using CSS media queries and frameworks like Bootstrap, helps ensure text remains legible across various devices by adjusting dynamically based on screen size.

Some remaining challenges in Web Typography

Despite advances in web fonts, designers still face challenges, particularly with performance and accessibility. For example, large font files can slow down websites. Tools like Glyphanger or the practice of font subsetting can optimize loading times by reducing font file sizes, while variable fonts—combining multiple styles in one file—also speed up load times. From 2020 to 2022, the number of websites making use of variable fonts increased by a whopping 125%. 

The use of fonts on the web has evolved from basic, web-safe options to a diverse landscape of custom and variable fonts that enhance both aesthetics and functionality. The widespread adoption of web fonts, coupled with new technologies like variable fonts and responsive typography, allows designers to create more engaging and accessible online experiences. However, our data shows that despite the abundance of available fonts, most industries and cultures opt for similar font options unless the local script requires a specialized typeface. For brands and websites to stand out, developing their own typeface helps create a unique brand identity offline and online and can take branding to the next level.