Web typography for small teams

It is rarely the thing that gets a project approved, and often the thing that decides how it goes. Most advice about web typography assumes a team that does not exist at your size. Here is the version that does not.

Consistency is the quiet half of design work: it rarely gets complimented, and its absence is noticed immediately. Budget a little time for it every quarter and it never becomes a project of its own.

What to keep

Body text below 16px is a readability problem, not a style choice. Small and consistent beats large and occasional here. If two people in the business would answer this differently, that gap is the actual problem.

What to drop

Process that exists to coordinate ten people is overhead when there are two of you. The reasoning matters more than the rule, because the rule has exceptions.

Where to start

Two typefaces is plenty for almost any site. Small and consistent beats large and occasional here. Check it against what you would want a competitor's site to get wrong.

The short version

The measurable part of design is whether people can find what they came for and act on it without hesitating. Three things worth confirming about web typography before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Body text below 16px is a readability problem, not a style choice — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

Worth checking on your own setup before it becomes someone else's problem to fix.