My portfolio site looked like a mess for months until I fixed the fonts

For like 6 months, my homepage had this bold display font paired with a script font that was way too fancy, it just clashed. I finally swapped the script for a simple sans-serif after seeing a clean example on a design blog. The whole page just looks calmer and more professional now, it's a night and day difference. Has anyone else fixed a font pairing that was making their project look worse?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_harper1mo ago

My old blog had this 28px header in Playfair Display with a 16px body in Lobster. It was a total eyesore, like a wedding invite mixed with a diner menu. I get what @nathan_davis means, it's so easy to get attached to a fancy font. I finally switched the body text to Inter and it just clicked. The page stopped fighting with itself.

nathan_davis1mo ago

Oh man, been there.

roberts.diana21d ago

3 different fonts on one page is basically asking for a headache, I learned that the hard way back in 2010 with a MySpace layout that had three scripts fighting each other. I spent like 2 hours picking out this fancy cursive for the headings and then paired it with some pixel font for the text, and it looked like a ransom note written by a drunk calligrapher. The worst part was I thought I was being creative and unique, but really I was just making everyone's eyes bleed. My friends would visit my profile and just leave immediately because the page was literally painful to look at. Eventually I just reset everything to Arial and felt like a weight lifted off my shoulders, sometimes simple is the kindest thing you can do for your readers.