Getting started with font loading
This is one of those topics that looks small until it costs you something. A short on-ramp to font loading for teams who have not touched it before.
Real-world numbers from actual visitors matter more than a score produced on a fast laptop. Assume whoever inherits this will have half your context and none of your patience.
Why it matters
Custom fonts commonly block the first paint. This is the sort of thing that compounds, quietly, in both directions. Anything you cannot measure here, you are deciding by taste, which is fine as long as everyone knows it.
Your first week
- Find out what is already in place
- Self-hosting removes a third-party round trip
- Change one thing and measure it
A sensible fallback prevents invisible text. It is worth being explicit about, because assumptions differ quietly. Budget a little time for it every quarter and it never becomes a project of its own.
What this looks like day to day
Speed is a feature people notice only in its absence, and then they leave rather than complain. Three things worth confirming about font loading before you move on:
- Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
- Self-hosting removes a third-party round trip — and you know whether that is true here
- There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped
Most of the value here comes from doing the first two things, not all of them.