Trebuchet is hard to read
I just came from reading the latest article on Beast-Blog by Mike Cherim which is about accessible accessibility. I enjoyed the article but reading it was certainly a chore. “Why?” you ask; Trebuchet, that is why.
Trebuchet is a font by Vincent Connare who is also the creator of Comic Sans which I have mentioned around here before. It is packaged with Windows and Internet Explorer/Office for the Mac and thus is considered “almost” web-safe. During web browsing I have noticed it has started to be used more and more in varying roles. I have used it for headings on previous designs and it generally looks good since it has a lot of interesting characteristics.
The problem with the article is that at smaller font sizes Trebuchet is increasingly difficult to read and thus I was unable to process the paragraphs at my normal reading speed. It is a known fact that you can dig up using Google. Specifically you will notice that the lowercase “L” isn’t aways spaced properly creating dark spots where it is too close to other letters. Also there are spacing problems of the opposite nature between the lowercase “I” and “T”. Overall a body of text set in Trebuchet looks jumpy and inconsistent (i.e. Doesn’t have a consistent gray value).
One second while I mount my soapbox…
Save your interesting fonts for headings and titles. Body copy and other smaller text should be in a very legible font so that it is not a chore to read your site. Thank you and goodnight.
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That’s good to know — good feedback to have. Personally I like it but I do know exactly what you’re saying in regard to the spacing of certain characters and some of its oddities.
I totally agree with you. We need someone to come up with the “perfect” web-safe font that works and looks identical on every platform. I know, I know, it’ll never happen. But a guy can always dream.
[...] 80-90% of normal, depending on the typeface. Both of the examples linked above use Trebuchet, which needs to be bigger). This works well for a normal range of screen resolutions. If people like them larger or smaller [...]