Blogging 101 - Font Style & Size

11 November 2015


Ages ago I sort of covered font styles and sizes in my Blogging 101 post, Template Design Basics. But that was more related to not having terrible font on a ridiculous background so that people can actually read what you are trying to say to them.

If you are a regular reader, more so on desktop than on your phone as the changes wouldn't have been as obvious. My blog's main body font style and size has changed and there are some pretty good reasons for that. 

Font Style

For as long as I can remember, my blog body font style was Raleway. I loved it. I had seen it on other blogs before and I just felt it was both pretty and easy to read. One day when I was viewing my blog through Josh's laptop it suddenly hit me that I didn't have the Raleway font actually installed on the blog. It was selected, and as I had the font installed on my computer I could see it on my main desktop but everyone else was getting a boring Georgia or Times New Roman style font! Ugh! How could I have missed this for so so long! 

Once I figured this out it literally took me 5 minutes to actually fix this and I sighed and wondered how I had lived in the dark so long. For some reason I thought that when I viewed my blog on the phone that the font was just suppose to be different. It never even phased me.

Install Your Font

It's stupidly easy to install any font you want into your blog so that anyone anywhere can view it. 
Just by using Google Fonts. Follow that link, type the font you want in the search bar in the top left hand corner of the screen, and search!

See the font you want, click the big button that says "Add to Collection" then go to the bottom of the screen and click "USE". From there you will see a bunch of instructions on how to get the code and install it into your blog! Crazy easy. 

For more indepth instructions visit "I Can Build a Blog".


Font Size

After sharing one of my recent Blogging 101 style posts over on a blogging Facebook group, I had a comment from a fellow blogger who said my blog font was too small, she could barely read it, that she had great vision but my font size was too small. Ha! I laughed at the screen. Sure your vision is fine lady. "Thanks for your feedback, you can zoom on your desktop". My font size was fine, I was sure. 

She replied that studies showed the best sizes for blogs were 16px at least! What a joke, that would be giant! Ridiculous. I ignored her comment. I could read my blog just fine. After sharing this with Josh, we googled ideal blog size font and were kind of shocked by article after article telling us to have larger font sizes. 

That font sizes for your blog should be at least 16 pixels because that's actually the size they use in magazines. I think my blog was rocking about size 12 text at the time. Crazy, I thought. My blog will look stupid. 

I read more articles. It seemed like studies showed that if your font size was too small to read, that people were 90% more likely to just leave the blog than to attempt to zoom and read it. Zooming is easy folks, just saying. 

oops.
I bit the bullet and swallowed my pride. I wasn't going to admit anytime soon that this lady was right. And upped my font size to 14. I did try the size 16 look but it is enormous! Not for me sorry. Size 14 will have to do.

What size font do you have on your blog? Do you think it is too small or just right?




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8 comments

  1. This is so useful! For some reason font was never something I put much thought into, but I sure will now!
    Naomi ❤︎❤︎- Teatime with Naomi

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  2. I think font size is extremely dependent upon font style. Fonts with lighter weight like yours should generally be larger, but fonts like Times New Roman or Arial, the ones with heavier weight, can get away with a 12, I feel.

    May | THE MAYDEN

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  3. I didn't really see the importance of font size until now- definitely going to re-evaluate a few things! haha.

    Georgia | The Weekend Attic - Personal Style, Beauty and Lifestyle

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  5. Thanks for these really useful tips - I definitely notice that when font size is too small on blogs I kinda skip over them, but I didn't realize size 16 is what we should aspire to have. Wow! Might definitely try to play around with bigger fonts now.

    Coline - www.conflictedbeauty.com

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  6. This was so useful, you're such a clever little egg!

    Charlotte / Styleaked

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  7. I had no idea about any of these little tips, so thanks for sharing! Need to check my own font size now :) x

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  8. very relevent for me at the moment! gonna have a fiddle around on my blog to get my font size larger. x
    anna messystreet.com

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Thanks so much for commenting everyone! I read and appreciate every single one of your comments! xx