Custom fonts: yay or nay?

[NeoMetallix]

Lots of fandom's out there in the video game and movie worlds have custom fonts. Do you think using custom fonts in a theme/design looks good or do you think it's over the top? Say a Spider-Man forum uses the famous Spider-Man font used in the raimi movies for forum titles, would it add to the design or be gaudy?

 

[Foster]

Gaudy. I am a graphic designer, and a professional designer. I think there are so many opportunities to be original while also nodding back to the actual original font of, let's say, Spiderman. It would be nothing more than a knockoff.

 

[Husk]

I don't actually mind them in moderation or say, as a header font or something.

 

[Arantor]

Almost every site has “custom fonts” compared to what your computer has installed.

Roleplay sites in general seem to thrive on picking fonts that don’t necessarily go with the mood of a site, readability be damned, but that falls into the “super stylised” camp in general, which is where the movie example comes in.

Usual rules of good taste apply - use super stylised fonts sparingly, site heading/logo, occasional headings, because using it everywhere (especially body text) is just awful.

 

[Ravenfreak]

Usually just using custom fonts in a logo is fine, but if it's used throughout the entire board it looks bad. Especially if you have to tell your members to download a certain font style to even be able to see the proper font throughout the forum.

 

[Arantor]

This forum uses custom fonts, though. I see Jost, Helvetica Neue, Roboto, Oxygen, Ubuntu, Cantarell, Fira Sans, Droid Sans, all at various weights in *this* forum.

Sure, some of those are mobile falllbacks, but Jost explicitly is loaded from Google Fonts on this site. (And don’t forget Font Awesome.)

 

[Shortie]

I don't mind custom fonts as long as they are tasteful and not over the top. You can take a font and put your own swing on it without it looking too much or too out there.

Custom fonts in logos I do like to see.

 

[Cory]

If the custom font(s) are elegant to the design of the theme, then I think they can work out well. I mostly like to see custom fonts used for headers, especially the board logo. If a custom font makes text hard to read or looks tacky then I probably wouldn't actively use the board.

 

[Kyng]

I think they're a nice touch - provided that they're clear and easy to read (like the ones on Admin Junkies are).

However, it's very easy to ruin an otherwise-great theme with an unsuitable custom font.

 

[Wolt]

I'm partial to the system font stack, particularly the transitional (Charter) style combined with the default system UI sans-serif.

Just about as light on bandwidth as you can be, fully embracing the default system font stack while maintaining an attractive appearance.

systemfontstack

systemfontstack.com

Modern Font Stacks

System font stack CSS organized by typeface classification for every modern OS. The fastest fonts available. No downloading, no layout shifts, no flashes — just instant renders.

modernfontstacks.com

 

[Tracy]

They can add a nice touch if they fit the design, but often webmasters use them because they like the look and they may not be fitting from the view of others.
But custom fonts (too many of them) can add load to the delivery to your site for first time visitors, slowing it down as those fonts have to be pushed out to them normally. Even if they are pushed out via a CDN they add to the bandwidth load
This is very noticeable for sites that allow the use of custom fonts (those not normally present on a desktop system) to their users in posts (something that could be done easily in the past with older version of XenForo) or liberally throughout their site design. You will usually see Google fonts or similar used for this.
Each one of those fonts used adds to what has to be delivered to the visitor.
It is the same reason that there is an add-on over at XenForo to reduce the size of the Fontawesome icons delivered. Instead of delivering the entire font package it only delivers the ones actually used on the site.