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2009 UI Design
Two Great Screen Fonts: Georgia and Verdana
Fonts that look good in print don't always look good on a computer screen. Reading information from a screen is easier if you use a font that has been specially designed for on-screen reading. Two such fonts deserve special mention: Georgia and Verdana.
Georgia is a lovely serif font, and Verdana is a highly-readable sans-serif font. When compared to older fonts like Times New Roman and Arial, they appear much easier to read on-screen. Look at the following comparisons:
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Georgia Vs. Times New Roman |
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The first thing you'll notice, is that Georgia and Verdana are wider than most fonts. This adds to their readability. Another interesting characteristic is that their lower-case letters are quite tall — they're around two-thirds of the height of the upper-case letters. (This is particularly clear with Verdana.) This also adds to their readability.
Here's what Microsoft has to say about these fonts: The typography group at Microsoft contains some of the world's experts in creating type for reading on the screen. [They] commissioned world-renowned type designer Matthew Carter to create two new typefaces exclusively for Microsoft, designed specifically for screen readability. [The] Verdana and Georgia typefaces have become classics, especially with the growth in screen reading sparked by the Internet.
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