Is it hard for you to read text on the web on your devices? Sure you’ve squinted or tried to move your phone closer before so that you could read the text better.
In today’s designs, most websites become unreadable because of the new typography trend toward lighter and thinner fonts, and bad contrast, which makes it hard for the elderly to read the content. So why designers are just settling down to lighter and lighter text? Here’s why and how to tackle the issue.
Before we try to solve the problem of using light fonts, we’ll try to find the reason why.
The reason why designers use light fonts is that the text would be a little more subtle. Take Google’s Material Design Typography for example. For large text displays, they use “Roboto Light” so that your design would be a little nice.
Another reason is that it also balances the contrast in your work, making the readers go into your content smoothly. Without using light fonts for contrasting headlines and paragraphs, your content may be lost its individuality (or separation between them).
It also makes headings easier on the eyes. Back on Google’s Material Design Typography, another reason could be is so that the headlines make it easy on the eyes when viewing the title or large blocks of text.
Last but not least, it makes websites look modern. Light fonts give a sense of modernism on your website, even when it's thinner (but not too thin).
Now you know why designers use light fonts, here is the problem. When using light fonts, there is a downside to it which is bad contrasting in screens.
As a default, we use the contrast ratio, 21:1 which is completely black text on a white background. This contrast ratio is unpleasant to look at and to fix this, you simply need to tone it down. But we tone down too much which led us to a minimum contrast, 7:1. This contrast ratio is still readable for the users but its pleasant appeal makes it safe to look at. But still, we keep reducing contrast more and more.
Because of this problem, some companies like Twitter announced about changes in their new font and Google updated its font for its new logo design.
Now the question here is this: if something is fine, do we need to change it?
Fonts with light weights or light fonts aren’t necessarily a bad thing to use but when used right, they can make your designs stand out more and make your clients be able to read things more clearly. Here are some tips on using light fonts.
Headlines and body text are separated and therefore, using light fonts can help you define the contrast between headlines and body text. Try to experiment using light fonts for better results.
The only thing to keep in mind is to never sacrifice readability for a nice design. For that reason, using light fonts for small prints isn’t a good idea (it’s your choice). When using a light font, be sure that it has a strong and bold color contrast with the background. Also, keep the type size in mind.