When a website or brochure feels “a bit amateur” and the owner can’t say why, the answer is very often the type. Too many fonts, text that’s too small, lines that run the full width of the screen, headings that are barely bigger than the body. None of it is dramatic. All of it adds up.
You don’t need to become a typography enthusiast to fix this. You need a few rules with real numbers attached, and a reason behind each one so you can tell when to bend it.
Choosing fonts: start with the job
Fonts have personalities, but for a small business the first question is practical: does it read easily at small sizes, on a phone, in poor light? A font that only works as a large headline isn’t a brand font. It’s a decoration.
The broad families, and where they tend to fit:
Sans serif (no little feet on the letters, like Arial, Inter, Montserrat). Clean, modern, very readable on screens. The safe default for most websites and most trade, health and professional brands.
Serif (small strokes at the ends of letters, like Georgia, Garamond, Playfair). Traditional, editorial, often read as established or premium. Excellent for long reading in print. Good serifs designed for screen work well online too.
Script and handwritten. Personal, crafty, sometimes elegant. Use for a logo or a short headline at most. Never for body text, phone numbers or anything someone needs to read quickly.
Display fonts (decorative, very bold, condensed, novelty). For a single big headline. They get tiring fast.
Pairing: two is enough
Almost every brand works with two typefaces: one for headings and one for body text. Plenty of good brands use only one, in different weights.
What makes a pair work is contrast in one obvious way and harmony in others. Some reliable approaches:
- A serif heading with a sans serif body. Classic and hard to get wrong.
- One sans serif family in two weights. Bold for headings, regular for body. Very clean, very easy to keep consistent.
- A characterful heading font with a plain body font. Let the heading carry the personality and keep the body quiet.
What doesn’t work: two fonts that are similar but not the same (two different geometric sans serifs, for example). It just looks like a mistake.
Where to find them: Google Fonts is free, its fonts can be used commercially, and it works on websites, in Canva and in desktop software. Paid fonts are worth it when you want something more distinctive, but check the licence. Desktop, web and app use are often sold separately, and your web developer needs a web licence to use it on your site.
Sizes that work
These are the numbers we start from. Adjust for your audience. If your customers are mostly over 60, go bigger across the board.
On websites:
- Body text: at least 16 px. Browsers default to 16 px for a reason. For content-heavy sites, 17 to 18 px often reads better.
- Headings: a clear step up. H1 around 2 to 2.5 times body size on desktop, H2 around 1.5 to 1.75 times.
- On phones, scale headings down so long words don’t break mid-word, but keep body text at 16 px or more.
- Buttons and menu items: at least the body text size.
In print:
- Body text in brochures and reports: about 10 to 12 point, depending on the font. Some fonts look much larger than others at the same nominal size.
- Flyers and business cards: nothing under 7 to 8 point, and only for fine print.
- Signage: work out the viewing distance first. Type that reads from across a room is nothing like type that reads from a moving car.
Line length and spacing
These three settings do more for readability than font choice.
Line length. A common rule of thumb is about 45 to 75 characters per line, including spaces, for body text. Shorter and the eye jumps too often; longer and it loses its place returning to the next line. On a wide desktop screen, text that runs edge to edge is often 150 characters or more. Constrain the width of text containers so paragraphs sit in a comfortable column.
Line height (leading). For body text, around 1.4 to 1.6 times the font size. Default settings in some tools are tighter, which makes paragraphs look dense and grey. Headings can be tighter, around 1.1 to 1.3, because they’re short.
Paragraph spacing. Leave a visible gap between paragraphs, roughly the size of one line. Don’t indent and space at the same time.
And for good measure: left-align body text. Centred text is fine for a two-line heading or an invitation. For anything longer, it makes the reader hunt for the start of every line. Fully justified text on websites creates uneven gaps between words, especially on phones.
Screen and print aren’t the same
The same font can behave differently in each. A few things that catch people out:
- Thin weights look elegant in a design mock-up on a high-resolution monitor and disappear on a cheaper phone screen or on uncoated paper. Use regular weight (400) or above for body text.
- Pale grey text is a screen fashion that hurts readability everywhere. Contrast matters as much as size. Our article on colour contrast and readability explains how to check it.
- Reversed text (white on a dark background) needs to be a little bigger and bolder than dark-on-light to read as easily, particularly in print where ink spreads slightly into the white.
- All caps slows reading. Fine for a short label or button. Not for a paragraph.
Keeping it consistent
The hard part isn’t choosing fonts. It’s making sure everyone uses them the same way: your website, your Canva templates, your email signature and the flyer someone made on a Friday afternoon.
Write it down. A simple type spec in your brand style guide (heading font and size, body font and size, line spacing, colours) means anyone can follow it. On WordPress sites built in Elementor, we set these as global fonts once so every page inherits them. If someone changes the body size, it changes everywhere. Our guide to Elementor global colours and fonts shows how that works.
A quick audit you can do now
Open your homepage on your phone and one printed item you hand out. Count the fonts. Check the body text isn’t smaller than your phone’s own menu text. Find the longest line of text on your desktop site and count the characters. Look for any pale grey or thin text and try reading it outside in daylight.
If you find more than two fonts, tiny or pale body text, or edge-to-edge paragraphs, those are your fixes, roughly in that order.
Choosing and specifying type is part of every brand and graphic design project we do, from logos to annual reports. Our portfolio shows how that carries across print and web.