Typography and Your Real Estate Website Design

There are so many different fascinating disciplines in design, but the one that always sticks out to me is typography. I remember sitting in one of my first design courses where I received an intro to all the different facets and I remember watching the documentary, Helvetica, and in it you can see people working, looking at their screens and manipulating the smallest corners of each individual letter.

And I thought to myself, "Hmm... that's a silly job, why would I ever want to go into that?" And to this day, I don't find it silly, but my attention span would never allow me to focus on a project such as that. Over the years, I've learned to appreciate the subtlety of it and love every part about it because it is important that someone create these beautiful pieces that many people take for granted.

Typography is everywhere because it's the vessel to relate your message and, depending on the typography you choose, it can make you look a certain way. As I've already conveyed in numerous posts, your first impression is everything.

Since typography is everywhere, it's important that you choose wisely. Thin font families can make your words look elegant, but it's of no use if your particular audience can't read it. Pick something too bold, and you may have the same problem to a lesser degree, but you might come off looking childish.

Now I've never been a fan of lists, but I'm about to make one of my favorite fonts. Depending on your needs, it can directly narrow your selections—but in most cases, there are tons of fonts for your needs. When it comes to our custom websites at TRIBUS, we use Google's Font library to keep sites lean. Here are my favorites:

1. Lato

This is one of my defaults, as well as many designers. As you will see, I choose versatile fonts in the sense that they have numerous 'style' or weights that allow that font to become very bold or very thin. And this one is always a safe pick to look very elegant, but readable.