Advice

On fonts and features

Why the serif font? It works well in headlines; it reads not so well on a screen. Just curious and readjusting to the new platform. BTW, you handled the transition very well.

Thank you. The theme came with these fonts out of the box, and my primary concern was just getting the site up an running again.

If you’ve got an eye for this sort of thing, feel free to leave a comment. I’m totally open to any font suggestions, feature requests, or notes on the user interface.

Now’s the time to make changes while it’s all still fresh.

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18 thoughts on “On fonts and features

    • Coquette says:

      Just an FYI, I prefer to keep the same font for questions and answers and simply put the questions in bold italics.

  1. Dee says:

    I am not sure how other people feel, but I find the text way too large to read comfortably, regardless of serif. Won’t stop me from reading, of course. Thanks for hanging in there!

  2. Stephanie says:

    The font is large and difficult to read on a screen..but my eyes will figure it out, I’m just glad you’re back at it.

  3. Davis says:

    I don’t mind the large body text or the fonts you’ve picked. The post headlines in particular look awesome. The header where “Dear Coquette” and your Dolly logo is looks a bit underwhelming above the snazzy posts, though. It’d be a ripe spot for a more elaborate logo, like the Dolly/Queen/watercolour hybrid you used a while ago. If you like, this long-time reader would be happy to make one for you.

  4. Margo says:

    looks to me like it’s a mobile theme that isn’t scaling well to desktop, because it looks great on a phone but way too big otherwise. I love the playfair display and I think that it and georgia could probably be happy together at a smaller size.

  5. KIM says:

    The serif font works well. Georgia (the font currently being used on your website) is a really well chosen font to be read on screen, especially given that it is large in size. If it were to be a sans-serif, Helvetica would be a nice font to use. Helvetica is a swiss-powered font used to convey the most minimal information as possible. Usually with no graphics, visuals or anything the font allows the information to be the design. So there are two ways to decide this – one is that this blog has so much personality, soul and power that it needs the serifs to help hold the weight of your words or if you want your words to be seen as crystal clear as you state them, then a sans-serif would do.

  6. Ashley says:

    im a graphic designer.

    the fonts don’t bother me much, although i like the idea of sans serif (think helvetica) answers and serif (what you’ve got now) questions, but you already answered that you don’t like this. it seemed you didnt like this because of the work required on your end… i don’t know what platform you’re using but it might be possible to code that in the theme itself which removes the work from doing it every post.

    what does bother me is the type is fucking HUGE on a desktop, to the point of discomfort. it could be your settings, that its mobile optimized at the expense of the desktop version.

    I’m more of a print designer than a web designer though, but theres a ton of free resources out there that can show you how to fix these things yourself, or you could hire someone pretty inexpensively to fix it for you.

    btw, have you looked into squarespace? it might be a good option for you, theoretically you could combine this blog, plus your original one, and your little store thing you had all on one site with separate pages instead of separate sites. i believe it takes comments too if I’m not mistaken.. possibly through discus? its definitely worth looking into. i built my mother a simple site using that for her law-related business and while I’m a decent graphic designer with print (i.e., i get design principle which is universal) I’m god awful with coding and don’t have the patience for web design and i found it relatively easy to use and make it look the way i wanted it to. i promise you i don’t work for them, just happy with the product 🙂

    if you want further help, feel free to shoot me an email, I’m assuming you can see my email on your end but if not let me know and ill post it.

  7. Eva says:

    I personally love Kaushan Script and would suggest it for your Dear Coquette title, if it’s to your liking. [http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/kaushan-script]

  8. Deryck says:

    Sure, the type is HUGE, but I’d rather you’d have kept the italics. Definitely added a bit of personality. – NYC graphic designer guy =)

  9. J says:

    You want sans-serif font. Everything else is ok. People can resize if they think it’s too big (on their own devices) – but they can’t change the font as easily.

  10. abe says:

    It would be great if the question was centered both on the front page and on the linked page. It’s so big and the side margins are filled by the date/share features and whatever that little black tag is on the side that the fact that the question is left centered throws the whole thing off.

    Additionally the “ADVICE” on top of the question seems a little redundant as we all know that you’re dishing out advice here on Dear Coquette. Furthermore touching back on that little black tag on the right hand side, what is that? It doesn’t link to anything and seems to take up space.

    Anyways I’m super glad to see back up and posting advice!

  11. natalie says:

    (Disregard if you’re no longer looking for input.) It’d help potentially knowledgeable web designers– what’s you’re platform?

    Also, I haven’t checked the site in a minute so I’m not sure if you’ve already made changes in the past few days, but using Chrome on a Mac, nothing looks disproportionately sized or displeasingly fonted to me. I do agree to some extent with the commenter above me who said that the header is a little out of line with the body text.

    Glad to have you back!!

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