Choosing the Right Fonts for your Squarespace Site
For small business owners, having a really great site design is crucial for an effective website that is going to get you the site traffic, sales and clients that you deserve!
One element that’s at the top of the need-to-nail design checklist is typography. Nearly every component of your website utilizes text. Things like headlines, menus, buttons, contact forms, bios and so much more have text at the forefront and are a huge part of the user experience. This is why making the right font choices is so important.
Great font pairings can enhance your website’s aesthetic, professionalism and clarity, allowing visitors to enjoy what you have to offer to the fullest.
In this post, we’ll discuss tips for how to perfectly pair your fonts, go through some examples, and show you exactly how to implement your font choices on Squarespace.
Let’s dive in!
Why Font Choice Matters
Like we said above, nearly every component of your website utilizes text, which means that even a single poor font choice could derail the effectiveness of your entire site!
Readability and user engagement
The fonts you choose dictate two main things:
Readability: how easy it is to clearly read the copy on your site
User Engagement: how long visitors stay and how much they interact with your content
If your site is filled with fonts that are unpleasant to look at or impossible to read, most visitors will click out quickly, even if they are interested in your business. Alternatively, if your fonts are clear and attractive, a visitor might be much more likely to stick around, browse and engage, even if they knew nothing about you from the start.
Brand cohesiveness
Fonts also play a major role in creating a cohesive brand identity and contribute to the overall look and tone of your website.
It would feel wrong if all of your marketing materials and social graphics used one set of font pairings, but your website used something totally different, right?! How would people know which vibe is really yours? Developing a consistent brand personality and carrying it through to your website is key to creating those important customer connections.
Font Pairing Tips
So, with all that being said, how exactly do you make the best possible font choices for your website and avoid a potential typography crisis?
Keep it consistent
Once you choose a font pairing or “family” of fonts that you love, use those same fonts throughout your entire website.
We know it can be hard to narrow things down since there are SO many beautiful fonts out there, but switching up the look from page to page, or from platform to platform can make things look messy and create a confusing brand message.
So pick your fonts and stick to them!
Keep it readable
When choosing fonts, keep in mind who could, potentially, be looking at your website. Are your choices accessible for anyone and everyone who might find themselves browsing?
Take a step back and look at your fonts objectively! Are they actually clear and easy to read or do you just like the look of them?
For example, you should avoid using fancy cursive fonts (as cute as they are!) for your paragraphs. These types of fonts are beautiful to highlight a few words, but a large text block would be near impossible to (easily) read through, meaning your visitors might miss out on important information.
VS.
Limit the number of fonts used
To make sure you stay consistent, we recommend using a maximum of 3 fonts for your whole website in order to maintain a clean and cohesive design.
Generally, it’s best to have at least 2, with an easy-to-read through paragraph font and a contrasting heading font, but adding a third into the mix can also help bring your brand personality to life!
Take this example from our Ventura Squarespace Template which perfectly utilizes 3 font styles and adds a burst of personality with a bold choice to grab your attention.
This template utilizes 3 different font styles to highlight different information, all of which are impactful and clear to read. You’ll notice that the heading font is, by far, the boldest of all the fonts, however it doesn’t completely overshadow the others. There is a good balance which is important!
The paragraph font is simple and understandable, and it’s all rounded out by a third style in all caps to highlight extra details.
Create contrast
Having a visual hierarchy created through font choices is super important for the success of your website. If everything was the same style, size and thickness it would not only be pretty boring, but it would also be difficult for people to navigate directly to the most important information and the areas of your site that ultimately lead to sales!
As far as font hierarchy goes, you generally want to have
Headings: the biggest, most prominent text on the page
Paragraph text: the bulk of your website copy will be in a smaller more “classic” paragraph style underneath your headings
Highlights: subheadings, buttons, or other extra details that are used to point out special pieces of information or calls to action
You can achieve contrast between these 3 types by using fonts with different styles (think a more fancy display font for headings and a more simple sans serif for paragraphs). You can also use italics and boldness to differentiate important headings and details from the rest of the text on the page.
This example from our Ava Grand Squarespace Template shows how you can use both font style and italics to create contrast between headings and paragraph text.
Pairing a more artistic display font with a clean sans serif paragraph font makes it really easy to differentiate the content while still keeping things fun and creative. In addition, italicizing certain words throughout the website adds a certain flair and helps to highlight keywords and phrases that visitors should pay special attention to.
Consider the mood
Different fonts can evoke different feelings and emotions, so you want to be sure to align the fonts you're choosing with your existing brand message.
A font like this feels mature and professional and might be used by a business dealing with more serious subject matter.
Whereas a font like this feels more playful and casual and might be used by a business that’s creative and easy going.
Our Shelley template is a great example of implementing a font family that showcases different moods, while still staying true to the brand message.
The heading font used in this template is bold with sharper edges and is paired with a handwritten script font. The combination of the two is unique but speaks to the idea that this brand is probably both respectable and inviting.
There's a balance between the two styles, one doesn't completely overshadow the other, and you can understand the personality and vision of this particular business just by looking at the font choices.
Where to find the perfect fonts and font pairings
There are a lot of different ways to find individual fonts and combinations that you can use on your own website!
To start, make sure that you know what kind of style you’re looking for. There are thousands of fonts out there in the world, so narrowing down your vibe is going to be super helpful. If you don’t already have a brand identity to follow, consider looking up some inspiration on Pinterest or Instagram to get you going.
👉 How to create the perfect moodboard for your business
When you’re ready to start browsing for fonts, here are some resources to look into:
Squarespace: Squarespace itself has an incredible library of built in fonts for you to browse, and they even offer ready made font pairings that you can use on your website if you’d like. This is super helpful if you’re having trouble putting fonts together on your own, or if you just need some inspiration to get you started.
Google Fonts: Google Fonts has a ton of beautiful fonts to choose from, all completely free. Once you find one you like, you simply download it to your computer. You can filter by style and font type and even type in your own piece of text to see how it looks in each font option.
Adobe Fonts: This is a great resource for anyone who pays for Adobe Creative Cloud. You can set different browsing filters like weight, height, style, etc and can even browse font packs which are curated packs of similar fonts for all different styles and occasions.
Creative Market: Creative Market is a design marketplace with all different types of resources, but they also have one of the biggest premium font offerings around. You can browse fonts of all styles from handwritten to clean and professional and of all price ranges.
MyFonts: MyFonts is a font marketplace where you can search thousands of purchasable fonts in all different styles. You can search by category as well as browse font bundles from different type foundries.
TypeWolf: The ultimate trendy fonts directory, filled with font lookbooks, font pairings, and resources to learn how to pick the perfect combination.
Monotype: Feeling totally stuck? Monotype's font pairing generator is a great place to start to figure out the styles of fonts you like and what sorts of fonts go well together.
WhatFont: This handy Chrome extension allows you to get the font details used on any website, including the font family, weight, size, and style. This is a great way to discover new fonts all while seeing them in action!
How to add fonts to your Squarespace site
Now that you know what makes a great font pairing and how to find fonts for yourself, let’s go over actually implementing these choices into your Squarespace site.
To access the Fonts Panel:
In your main menu, navigate to Website > Styles OR click the Paintbrush Icon in the top right corner of your screen
From here you can click the box that says “Fonts” to quick view some recommended Font Packs that Squarespace has put together OR click the arrow next to the box to head into the Fonts Panel and make further customizations.
Font packs
At the very top of the Fonts Panel you’ll find the Font Pack that your website is currently based off of. Click on “All Font Packs” to browse more.
Here you can search through the dozens of Font Packs that Squarespace offers! Click on any pack to see what the fonts look like, in real time, on your website. And remember that all fonts can be fully customized, so if you don’t find a Font Pack that you love or already know which individual fonts you’d like to use, just choose any pack to get started with.
Main font customizations
Back in your Fonts Panel, you’ll find the Headings, Paragraphs and Buttons tabs. This is where you can further customize the fonts in the pack that you’ve chosen, or pick new fonts to start from scratch with.
Under each tab, you’ll be able to customize
Family: This is where you can choose a completely custom font, different from the Font Pack, if you’d like. Click “Browse All Fonts” to search through all of the fonts Squarespace offers.
Weight: This is the thickness of your font. Some fonts have many different options for weight and some only have one.
Style: Choose between normal or italic.
Line Height (for Headings and Paragraphs): Adjust the space between lines of text.
Letter Spacing: Adjust the space between the individual letters in the font.
Text Transform: This option allows you to transform the font into all lowercase, all uppercase, or capitalized. You can also choose none if you’d like to control this yourself.
Size: You can adjust the size for each text element. There are 4 heading types, 3 paragraph types and 3 button types. All should have different sizes.
Important! Making changes under these tabs will affect your fonts site wide.
If you’d like to make extra customizations to a single text element on your website, you can do so back in the Fonts Panel under the Assign Styles tab.
Under this tab, you can re-assign the style properties of individual elements without it affecting the global styles you set previously! This is perfect for special details like your site navigation or for further customizing content like blog posts.
Simply scroll through the Assign Styles Panel until you find the element you'd like to customize. You'll then follow similar steps as above to change the style of the individual font.
Adding custom fonts with CSS
While Squarespace is great and has so much to offer, sometimes you just need something a little bit more special. Maybe you’ve been given specific fonts to use by a brand designer, or you’ve found some on your own that you can’t live without.
Not to fear! If you’ve purchased premium fonts from a marketplace or downloaded unique fonts from Google Fonts or Adobe Fonts, you can upload them into Squarespace using a little bit of custom coding.
And there you have it - everything you need to know to make the best font choices possible!
Hopefully this guide has made you feel much more confident about upping your typography game. It’s such an easy way to increase the effectiveness of your website, allowing your business to shine and all of those potential clients and customers to come pouring in.
Want more website tips? Check out the posts below 👇
How to create the perfect color palette for your website (easy DIY!)
5 awesome features you can add to ANY Squarespace website to give your business a boost!
How to Integrate Social Media with your Squarespace Site
Squarespace SEO: Boosting your Site's Visibility with our go-to SEO Checklist
How to Add a Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions to your Squarespace Website
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