Responsive Text in Responsive Web Design
There are a lot of articles on responsive web design and there are a lot of articles on responsive text. Here’s a list of the best one’s I’ve read so far.
However, if you do have the time and go ahead and browse through them, you’ll eventually end up with some questions. One of them is the following:
Should font change based on screen size and device capabilities?
I am not just referring to changing the font size. I am talking about changing whole typefaces based on resolution, device capabilities and any other factors one could consider useful when making decisions about fonts. There are fonts that look great in small type and look awful in large sizes. There are other fonts that look great only if their big and chunky (I refer to font sizes larger than 50 pixels especially). There are fonts that look great on Windows and look anything but great on Macs or Unix.
Forget about the Mac; fonts look nice on Mac even if they were designed for Windows.
Some fonts look great on mobile devices while others may blend in on some devices. The HTC Touch just popped into my mind and I guess a large, square font would blend in with the actual phone design.
The main question is if designers and developers should consider changing font families as well in their responsive designs, not just font sizes. If it’s not too much trouble, if it improves the experience, if it doesn’t create any issues and problems, if it doesn’t change the feeling of the design, if branding allows type change, then why not?




