Fonts and Colors

Blogs come in all fonts and colors, and there is no right way to handle them except that they ought to say something about your site whenever possible. Red State, for obvious reasons, goes heavy on the red and light on the blue. Gizmodo, a blog dedicated to gadgets, uses a more “techno” color scheme, with soft blues and oranges. Daring Fireball does the opposite of what you’d expect: there’s not an orange letter on the page; just unadventurous shades of gray. Each of them has a consistent scheme that makes it stand out from others, even while respecting the layout standards readers expect.

Less can be said on fonts, as most blogs use the popular fonts that come with blog software. The only warnings are to be sure your font is of a readable size for most screens (from 800×600 to 1024×768), and to avoid using comical or whimsical fonts on serious material. It’s also a good idea to stick with fonts that most people will have on their machines, because most browsers will default to a popular font anyway if they don’t have yours installed. Unless there’s a good reason not to, you should stick with a font that will not detract attention from your message. That normally means Arial, Times New Roman, Georgia, or the like.