Presenting the list of top 10 Google fonts (Font embedding service) best for your websites in 2020. The beginning of the article holds the list of google fonts and at the end, you will get a list of popular pairs that can be used to get appealing visual effects.
The web typography has a long history of walking along with web development as it accounts for approximately 90-95% of web design. It used to be a more critical design exercise than it is nowadays. Previously, the process of decorating a web page with the styled and custom font was too complicated for a simple user to use. It needs converting them to different compatible font extensions and embedding font files to the user’s server. Above all, the worst thing was the unavailability of a standard font system and the choice was limited to the user’s collection or typography knowledge, resulting in identical content formatting throughout websites.
The hike started in 2009 with the development of the WOFF font.
After one year, in 2010 Google launched its font directory called Google Fonts or Google Web Fonts, and here starts the new era in web typography.
As per Wikipedia the Google font has already been used widely with more than 17 trillion fonts served. Some of the popular fonts are Open Sans, Lato, Roboto, Raleway, Slabo, Oswald, Lobster, Montserrat and Playfair Display.
At present, with the help of Google Fonts, Web typography is at its apex having endless creativity when it comes to uses of a typo. It is now a precious resource for digital designers and was never so handy and easy to be used before.
The launch of the Google Web Font directory gives a new wing to designers and web developers to play with their creativity. Being a Google product, it has its reputation and overall, download interface and implementation are as easy as writing ABC. The directory got approximately 960 free fonts and being an open-source in nature, it is a viable alternative for every personal and commercial use.
Let’s start with the list of top 10 Google font trending nowadays:-
Roboto
Robot, the name is one of my personal favorites amount Google fonts. It’s a sans-serif font developed and released by Google in 2011, particularly for Android, which is a modern and crisp typeface that pairs well with Archvio, Open Sans, Lato, Montserrat, Raleway and many others. Its journey starts with the Android 4.0 “Ice Cream Sandwich”. Christian Robertson designed it in-house.
The font includes Thin, Light, Regular, Medium, Bold, and Black weights and also includes a condensed style for some of its weight.
Alone or pairing with another font(s), Roboto has been great particularly for tech websites, small businesses, corporate WebPages, or any type of brand with a modern approach.
Open Sans & Open Sans Condensed
Steve, a typeface designer based in Louisville, Colorado, is the mastermind behind this magic. You should agree to accept it as the most versatile font among the entire Google font family. It works wonders with almost any kind of application including print, web, and mobile. As per google font directory, popular pairings for the font are Roboto, Lato, Montserrat, Oswald, Raleway, and others.
When used alone or with other fonts pair, it won’t be a wrong selection for any kind of business or application. In particular, Open Sans can be used for blogs, landing pages, corporate and business web pages and many other genres.
Visit Open Sans on Google Fonts
Visit Open Sans Condensed on Google Fonts
Lato
A Warsaw-based designer Łukasz created this highly used font Lato in about 2010. It belongs to a sans serif typeface family which means “Summer” In Polish. The font was added to the Google font directory in December 2010 under Open Font Licence. As per Google directory, the most used pairing with Lato is Open Sans, Roboto, Oswald, Raleway, Source Sans Pro.
The font has been used frequently for any corporate site, blogs, etc
Oswald
Designed by Vernon Adams, Oswald was first launched in 2011 just after the launch of the famous Lato font. It got continual updates by Vernon until 2014 and then by others till now. It has been a great choice of headlines in respect to font-weight or use of caps but also has been used for body text. With regular updates, at present, the font supports different kinds of weight like extra light, light, regular, medium, semibold and bold.
With some of the popular pairings, according to Google font directory, like Open Sans, Roboto, Lato, Montserrat, Raleway the font Oswald has been using for professional web pages, real estate agencies, etc.
Raleway
The font initially designed as a single thin weight font by Matt McInerney and then expanded into 9 weight font including thin, thin italic, extra light, extra light italic, light, light italic, regular, regular italic, medium, medium italic, semibold, semibold italic, bold, bold italic, extra bold, extra bold italic, black, black italic by Pablo Impallari, Rodrigo Fuenzalida, Igino Marini in 2012. It belongs to an elegant sans-serif typeface family that is designed particularly for large size usages like headings, jumbo text, etc.
The font, as per my opinion, works amazing when used for headlines and gives a luxury appeal while using for web pages belonging to industries like Jewelry, clothing, fashion, shopping/eCommerce.
Some of the popular pairing of Raleway, as per google font directory, are Open Sans, Roboto, Lato, Montserrat, Oswald.
Source Sans Pro
As the first open-source font family from Adobe, Source Sans Pro created by Paul D. Hunt. It belongs to a sans serif typeface and extensively used as a user interface typeface. Highly inspired by the American gothic typeface designs such as Franklin Gothic, Lightline Gothic, and News Gothic, the font gets a shape by playing with both x-height and character width. The font is available from weight values of 200 to 900 including Extra-Light, Extra-Light Italic, Light, Light Italic, Regular, Regular Italic, Semi-Bold, Semi-Bold Italic, Bold, Bold Italic, Black, and Black Italic.
Some of the popular pairing of Source Sans Pro, as per google font directory, are Lato, Open Sans, Roboto, Montserrat, Raleway.
Visit Source Sans Pro on Google Fonts
Montserrat
Designed by Julieta Ulanovsky, a graphic designer from Montserrat near Buenos Aires in Argentina, Montserrat is popular among visualizers and designers for its wonderful style having simplicity & readability. It works great either as headlines or body text. Latter updated November 2017 by Jacques Le Bailly, the family now includes Thin Thin Italic, Extra-Light, Extra-Light Italic, Light, Light Italic, Regular, Regular Italic, Medium, Medium Italic, Semi-Bold, Semi-Bold, Italic, Bold, Bold Italic, Extra-Bold, Extra-Bold Italic, Black, and Black Italic. This font has two sister families in google font directory too, they are Al Alternates and Subrayada.
This font has a wide area of uses but generally works wonderful form making classic and modern design. Its family has been using for business web pages, news portals, educational websites
As per the Google font directory, some of the famous pairing for Montserrat are Open Sans, Roboto, Raleway, Oswald, and Lato.
Visit Montserrat on Google Fonts
Playfair Display
The Playfair Display font development is led by Claus Eggers Sørensen, a typeface designer from Amsterdam, Netherlands. The font started taking shape around the 18th century when pointed steel pens started being popular as a writing tool of the day. The font holds the traditional charm with a modern touch. The font works well to display large sizes like headlines, jumbo text, etc.
Playfair Display has been particularly used to show a traditional look with a modern touch. It’s often used for product title, product headline & and description and other webpages centered around luxury. Also, this has been one of the best fonts for printing high contrast and delicate hairlines.
As per google font directory, some of the famous pairing for Playfair Display are Roboto, Open Sans, Montserrat, Lato and Raleway
Visit Playfair Display on Google Fonts
PT Sans (Public Type Sans)
Primarily designed by Alexandra Korolkova and Released from 2009 onwards, the Public Type or PT Sans fonts comprises PT Mono, PT Serif and PT Sans. ParaType as PT Sans Pro and PT Serif Pro are some of the condensed and extra-bold typefaces are sold by ParaType. PT Sans and PT Serif include Regular, Regular Italic, Bold and Bold Italic.
It was developed for a project called “Public Types of Russian Federation.” The second family of the project, PT Serif, is also available.
Mostly used for landing pages, blogs, and other content-driven web pages. The font was developed considering giving way to Russian People a possibility to read and write in their native languages.
According to google font directory, some of the popular pairs are Open Sans, Roboto, Lato, Montserrat, and Raleway.
Visit PT Sans Display on Google Fonts
Alegreya Sans
Alegreya Sans is a sans serif family having calligraphic touch to give readers a smooth and pleasant reading experience. The family includes Thin, Thin Italic, Light, Light Italic, Regular, Regular Italic, Medium, Medium Italic, Bold, Bold Italic, Extra-Bold, Extra-Bold, Italic, Black, and Black Italic.
The family works well with literature, new portals web pages, blogs, and other content prominent portals or sites.
As per google font directory some of the popular pairing with Alegreya are Open Sans, Roboto, Lora, Oswald and Playfair Display.
Visit Alegreya Sans Display on Google Fonts
Font pairing works visually awesome
From the list given above, it’s clear now that every font has its property and usability, some of them can be used for headline and some work wonders for body text, some are appealing for captions or eCommerce and some are meant for corporate pages. So the main story – particularly what we feel – is not recommended to use a single font for both body text and headline. One should consider using a pair or combination of two (or more if required). Using one font for headlines and another for body text is a smart decision.
The thumb rule for designers “Opposites Attracts” also applies when it comes to using fonts in the pairing – maybe two or more – to have an appealing visual canvas. Using a visual contrast – the pairing of opposites – fonts together to make a perfect pair works magically.
Here are some of the examples from google font directory that have been used frequently by designers or developers to make design or web pages visually pleasing. I recommend using one for headings/subheadings and the other for body text (running text).
Some of the list given above already with the font details, here I am going to share some other list than listed below:-
- Roboto + Archivo, Roboto + Lora, Roboto + Nunito, Roboto + Raleway, Roboto + Space Mono.
- Open Sans + Montserrat , Open Sans + Source Sans, Lato + Montserrat, Lato + Open Sans, Lato + Roboto.
- Lato + Playfair Display, Lato + Proxima Nova, Lato + Vollkorn, Lato + Ubuntu, Lato + Georgia, Lato + Bebas, Lato + and Droid Serif.
- Oswald + Arial, Oswald + Roboto, Oswald + Manus, Oswald + Open Sans, Oswald + Merriweather, Oswald + Oxygen, Oswald + Eczar.
- Raleway + Open Sans, Raleway + Cabin, Raleway + Barlow, Raleway + Merriweather, Raleway + Droid Serif, Raleway + Playfair Display, Raleway + Montserrat.
- Source Sans Pro + Open Sans, Source Sans Pro + Montserrat, Source Sans Pro + Work Sans, Source Sans Pro + Oswald, Source Sans Pro + Arapey.
- Montserrat + Open Sans, Montserrat + Roboto, Montserrat + Lora, Montserrat + Source Sans Pro, Montserrat + Georgia, Montserrat + Esteban, Montserrat + Lato, Montserrat + PT Serif, Montserrat + Tinos.
- Playfair Display + Lato, Playfair Display + Open Sans, Playfair Display + Roboto, Playfair Display + Muli, Playfair Display + Heebo, Playfair Display + Poppins, Playfair Display + Hind.
- PT Sans + PT Serif, PT Sans + Trend Sans One, PT Sans + Crimson, PT Sans + PT Sans + Droid Sans, PT Sans + Poppins, PT Sans + Paytone One, PT Sans + Open Sans.
- Alegreya Sans + Alegreya, Nunito + Alegreya, Alegreya + Open Sans, Alegreya + Source Sans Pro.
Conclusion:-
I recommend using google fonts because of usability and accessibility and the best way to make a pair of two fonts (more than two in special cases like using different fonts for signature, captions, etc). So at the start of your project – it does not matter it’s designing or development – you should decide the pair of font you want to use throughout the project, decide in detail – which should be used as a headline and which for body text.
So next time before starting design or development, make a practice of doing some experiment on font selects.
