Web Design: Serif or Sans-Serif?

By Xah Lee. Date: . Last updated: .

A survey of top web site's design choices, as of 2016-03-25.

wall street journal front page 2017 03 21

Serif body text

The following sites use serif font for body text.

It's commonly thought that serif is more readable. However, if you do research, you'll find that scientific evidence are inconclusive.

sans-serif body text

Vast majority of websites are still sans-serif.

Title Text Font

Fixed Layout or Flow?

the New York Times uses a fixed design. That is, if you change window size, and when your window width is smaller than 1000px, then, text will disappear, you'll need to scroll horizontally.

{Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times}, they are all “responsive design”. The layout reflows even when your window width is like a cell phone sized.

[see Web Design: Fixed-Layout vs Flowed-Layout]

Text Logo Image or Text?

Some of the journals, use complex gothic font as their logos, like

𝕬 𝕭 𝕮

[see Unicode: Math Font ℤ]

so, do they design their own? or use Google Webfont, or use image, or SVG?

so that means, SVG is now mature.

[see Practical SVG Tutorial]

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