Six things to consider before changing fonts on a website

New year, new typefaces! I pimped the type of Pimp my Type – wow, that’s meta. I’m super excited about it and wanted to use this occasion to share with you, what motivated me to do it, and what I paid attention to. So if you’re in a similar situation, this article will help you to figure out, if it’s worth the effort to change fonts on a website, or not.

TL;DR: Ask yourself why? What does not work now, and what should be better after? Decide if it’s really worth the effort, test it with trial fonts and real content, check the licenses, and expect that the spacing most likely will be off. Brace yourself for inconsistencies, and know that it won’t be perfect afterwards.

Before and after

Before, I used the beautiful, soft and classical serif typeface Bressay by Dalton Maag for body text. Headlines and functional text, like navigational elements or captions, I set in the Basic Sans, a clean and softer sans-serif by Latino Type. Both were hosted via Adobe Fonts.

I replaced them with two of my favorite typefaces of the last year. The spiky and lively serif Piazzolla by Huerta Tipográfica for the body text. And the quirky and more expressive Grotesque Magnet by Frere-Jones Type.

Reasons for changing typefaces

First, take some time to think about why you want to change typefaces? What does not work now, and what do you expect to be better afterwards? What do you hope to achieve with the result? This will set the basis for everything. To give you an idea and some examples, I’ll guide you through my reasoning.

To set Pimp my Type more apart

I started Pimp my Type on YouTube almost 16 months ago. Back then, I wanted to keep the effort as little as possible, focus everything on content creation. This is why I used my existing, professional and unpronounceable Zeichenschatz site to push out content. I used the typography and style from there. After a year I moved it all on its own domain. Now I slowly start to differentiate the design more and more. Changing the typography was the next logical step to show that.

To create a different vibe

It should be a little less calm, a pinch more striking, more interesting, more unconventional. I wanted it to be shaper, and contrasting.

To take advantage of a variable font

Especially from optical sizing, which is possible with variable fonts out of the box. I just love this so much, and Piazzolla comes with it. I describe it here in more detail, but optical sizing optimizes the width and text weight to the size it is set in. You can best see how it works, when you compare a before an after for mobile. It’s subtle, but powerful.

Optical sizing off: the spacing is tighter and the weight is a bit lighter. Too light and compact for small text.
Optical sizing on: Yes! Slightly sturdier strokes and wider spacing make it ideal for smaller text.

To host the fonts myself

I hosted fonts via Adobe Fonts, which is a cool tool to try things out and to design. But it has some downsides, and I want to be independent of third party services as much as possible, mostly for privacy reasons. That’s also why the YouTube player on top is not loaded instantly and only after you clicked the thumb with the crappy resolution 😉.

To optimize for mobile

I wanted a compact display typeface that also would work for functional text and still show some character. It should be rather narrow with a larger x-height, and Magnet accomplished that. Especially in the navigation and Headings, it’s much clearer now. For the body text, Piazzolla is more space-saving as well, compared to its predecessor, which makes a better reading experience.

Before – especially on mobile the body text set in Bressay was rather wide.
After – Piazzolla is narrower, has a larger x-height and seems more even on mobile.

… but it should not be too different

Make it different but not too different – sounds like a horrible client briefing, right? 😂 I wanted it to be an evolution, not a revolution. The basic idea of having a Grotesque for headings and functional text and a serif for the body text should remain. Also, the metrics should not be radically different. The reason behind that is, that I want Pimp my Type to still be recognized, after building it up for the past months.

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What to consider before changing fonts

After all this background information, and sating my case, let’s move to the six things you should consider before you change typefaces on your website.

1. Is it really worth the effort?

Work will be involved, you’ll have to revisit every typographic component and check it again. In my case – my heart just said yes to it. It makes me so happy just to look at it, so it’s definitely worth the effort.

2. Test it, if possible.

I got myself some trial fonts to try it out. I quickly sandboxed it, fell in love and then tweak the tiny details. And always test it with your real blog posts and content, if possible. Specimen sheets always look nice, but they are rarely the reality of your product.

On my desktop monitor, everything looked fine, but after going live I discovered, that the font weight seemed very light and thin on the high density screen of my iPhone 12 and my MacBook. So I used the power of the variable font and set the normal weight of the text from the default of 400 to font-weight: 450. Pro tip: when you do something like this, check if the bold text has to be bolder too, to create sufficient contrast. In my case, it was not necessary and the default of 700 worked as well. I wrapped it all in a feature query that checks if the browser supports variable fonts. I combined it with a media query that detects, if it’s a retina screen, and voilà, here’s my overcomplicated typography CSS 😂.

@supports (font-variation-settings: normal) {
 @media screen and (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 2),
        screen and (min-resolution: 192dpi),
        screen and (min-resolution: 2dppx) {
  body {
   font-weight: 450;
  }
 }
}

3. Check the license before you buy it

In my case, the desktop license of Magnet does not include broadcast use, which is – of course – important to me! So I had to check with Frere-Jones Type what additional investment this means. If it had been out of my budget, I would have reconsidered it.

4. Vertical and horizontal spacing might be off

In my case, Magnet is a little different from Basic Sans. I had to realign every button and text that was covered by a rectangular shape. The tags, the category links, etc. It was not much work, but it was work.

Before – vertical alignment in the category “Typography” and comments link does not work yet. It seems to low positioned inside the shape.
After – With the vertical alignment adjusted, it appears centered.

5. Inconsistencies with prior content are almost inevitable

You will have to live with that. There will be captions and text inside my thumbs and other graphics that I will not update to the new typeface. Because I’d rather focus on new content than polishing the exiting stuff.

6. Live with it, that it won’t be perfect

Even if all these changes are a big improvement, I still see things that are not that perfect. I’m still not sure about my gigantic animated drop cap in goofy Cheee (but I slightly updated it already and put it on a fixed blobby brackground). At times, too many typographic elements collide and create imbalance, and a twitchy feeling. Also, you have to download quite some files now. Before it was roughly 350 KB of fonts, which is already a lot. Now it’s over 600 KB. That’s not ideal, and I’ll leave it up for future improvements.

But things will never be that perfect. There will always be cases where it’s not that ideal, and better done than perfect.


I’m curious, what do you think of the new typefaces? Was it worth all the effort? Are you planning to change typefaces on your website as well, and was this helpful to you? I’m happy to read your comments below!

P.S.: Thanks to Kel, who motivated me to include a better way of comparing before and after situations. Due to his feedback, I integrated a slider to make changes more obvious.

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9 Comments

  1. I think the update is well worth the effort. The pairing has fun energy to them that I feel represents you and the brand well.

    Thanks for sharing a look into your process! Keep up the great work!

    1. Thank you, Kedron! Glad you see it that way, that’s how I intended it. Happy you could take something from it as well!

  2. Hah. Thanks for the shout out. Really love what you’ve been creating on the site and channel.

  3. I read your article at just the right time. I had a “hankering” to change the fonts on some publications and blogs–I guess like changing accessories. Anyway, you brought me back to my senses and I’m reconsidering if any changes are needed at all.

    1. Happy you found it useful, Debora! Follow your feeling, eventually it should work for the project and make you happy as well. If you decide on changing something, let me know what and what you came up with!

  4. It is a lovely combination and I really like the energy of Magnet. I have been using Piazzolla, and like how it develops a more distinctive persona as it gets bigger. I was looking through fonts on Fontshare and was interested to see Rowan. I thought it looked well and experimenting with it, to my untutored eye :-), it looked a little like a more restrained Piazzolla at bigger sizes. Coincidentally, I was interested to see that the creator was none other than Inga Plönnigs who is also responsible for Magnet.

    https://www.fontshare.com/fonts/rowan

    1. Wow, Rowan is a brilliant typeface! Thanks for bringing it to my attention. I’ll definitely feature that one in the upcoming year!

      1. I like the idea of having 1 typeface that develops more personality in display sizes. Having found Rowan, I am now torn between Rowan and Piazzolla. Need to settle … can’t keep switching ! Had front page headings in Piazzolla and rest of site in Rowan, but that seemed contrived, even though it looked OK to my eye. I switched Rowan to the alternate stylistic set .. the flared effect is really quite subtle, I think. NNTR 🙂

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