What is / are Google fonts?
Google Fonts is a free to use library of 1,334 font families and APIs for convenient use via CSS and Android. The Google fonts library also has wide range of icons for common actions and items. You are free to download them for use in your digital products for Android, iOS, and web.
Why use Google fonts?
Google Fonts makes it easy to bring personality and performance to your websites and products. The large Google fonts catalogue of open-source fonts and icons, makes it easy to integrate a wide variety of font face and icons seamlessly—no matter where you are in the world.
How do I use Google fonts?
Fortunately using Google fonts in your website is very simple and most WordPress themes have the functionality within their customisation options for typography for you to select your preferred Google font. In most cases you can select more than one thus allowing you to have different font faces for your headings and paragraphs. If you are not using a template then you may want to consider using a plugin from the WordPress plugin library such as the popular Easy Google Fonts or Google Fonts Typography plugins. You can also integrate Google Fonts with your WordPress site directly, by adding a couple of lines of code in the functions.php file but that is for us techies out there and probably not you.
What is the best way to choose a Google font?
We all have our own preferences but one thing that we would strongly recommend is that you avoid single-weight display faces as they have limited usefulness in real-world design projects. Focus on choosing typeface families from reputable type designers and foundries that contain multiple weights and styles.
From previous projects we have found the following popular fonts;
Roboto, Open Sans, Lato, Slabo 27px, Oswald, Roboto, Source Sans Pro, Montserrat, Raleway, PT Sans
How to pair your font and what goes well with what?
Google fonts are great but the fonts are even more effective when you get the right combination and balance. As said before, instead of using just one font throughout, you can use combinations of fonts and in most cases your theme will allow you to select more than one thus allowing you to have different font faces for your headings and paragraphs. The end font combination choice is really down to preference but fortunately there are tools that can help make the pairing selection easier. So I hear you ask, how can you find the right kind of pair?
When you are choosing a specimen of any font on Google Fonts website, you get to see the various styles available and just below the styles, you will see “Popular Pairings” with your chosen specimen font. This will hopefully give you an idea about which font pairings are most popular for the specimen font you are viewing.
