10 Great Google Fonts for your website

Google Fonts is a great resource for open licensed typographyfor the web. But with so many options (more than 900 font families) it can be difficult to find and choose the right one for your website and brand.

If you have a business or an organisation, in a perfect world you already have some brand guidelines that specify which fonts you should use for offline and online materials, including your website. But at some point you might be looking for new fonts for a new brand, a new project, a personal blog or a re-branding for your existing business, and here is where Google Fonts provide you with an enormous amount of options.

But it’s is also very easy to settle on the same overused fonts because they are and feel safe. If you look advice online you will find a lot of articles offering the same number of font families, usually the most popular ones. We are talking about Roboto, Playfair Display, Lato, Montserrat, Open Sans, and more.

Don’t get me wrong these fonts above are great, well balanced, easy to read, professional, elegant, etc. But for this post, I wanted to go through the Google Fonts directory myself and pick some less common fonts that can be a great addition to your website or brand.

Serif Fonts

 

1. Prata

Prata is an elegant and romantic typeface with sharp features and organic teardrops.There is a certain tension in the contrast of its serifs and soft refined curves.
Designed by Ivan Petrov for Cyreal.
(Find Prata in Google Fonts)

It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest I go to than I have ever known.

A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens

2. Judson

Judson is a beautifully rounded shape serif typefacedesigned for African literacy. Its delicate and curvy terminals give the font an old school feeling but with a modern twist.
Designed byDaniel Johnson
(Find Judson in Google Fonts)

It matters not what someone is born, but what they grow to be.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J.K. Rowling

3. Petrona

Petrona is a gorgeous and easy to the eye font with gestural strokes for finishing features and uniform heights.
Designed byRingo Romain
(Find Petrona in Google Fonts)

We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.

The Tempest, William Shakespeare

4. Cormorant Infant

This is one of the many Cormorant families, which are all beautiful and gracious, this family is particularly delicate and harmonious.
Designed byChristian Thalmann.
(Find Cormorant Infant in Google Fonts)

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.

Jane Austen,Pride and Prejudice

5. Rozha One

Rozha One is a very high contrast Open Source font. Its letters thick and thin strokes make it an excellent choice for large headlines and poster-sized graphics.
Designed byIndian Type Foundry.
(Find Rozha One in Google Fonts)

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell…

J.R.R. Tolkien,The Hobbit

San-Serif Fonts

 

6. Poppins

One of my favourite fonts, a nice geometric sans serif with uniform heights and weights, it creates a stunning heading option.
Designed by Indian Type Foundry.
(Find Poppins in Google Fonts)

As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.

Franz Kafka,Metamorphosis

7. Karla

Karla is a grotesque sans serif typeface family, with Roman and Italic styles in two weights, Regular and Bold, try it in all caps and you’ll fall in love.
Designed byJonny Pinhorn
(Find Karla in Google Fonts)

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Leo Tolstoy,Anna Karenina

8. Quicksand

Quicksand is a display sans serif with rounded terminals, it uses geometric shapes as a core foundation, its shapes and weight gives this font a cute personality.
Designed byAndrew Paglinawan
(Find Quicksand in Google Fonts)

Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buenda was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover the ice.

Gabriel Garca Mrquez,One Hundred Years of Solitude

9. Palanquin Dark

Palanquin Dark is the heavier display family, with 4 weights. The Palanquin family is versatile and strikes a balance between typographic conventions and that bit of sparkle.
Designed byChristian Thalmann.
(Find Palanquin Dark in Google Fonts)

Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested.

Franz Kafka,The Trial

10. Questrial

Questrial is great for body text and headlines. It’s modern style, suited with past characteristics of great typefaces, make it highly readable in any context. The full-circle curves on many characters make Questrial a great font to blend seamlessly with others.
Designed byJoe Prince.
(Find Questrial in Google Fonts)

Somewhere in la Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember, a gentleman lived not long ago, one of those who has a lance and ancient shield on a shelf and keeps a skinny nag and a greyhound for racing.

Miguel de Cervantes,Don Quixote

Wrapping up

Choosing a font it’s not an easy task, not even for designers. It’s not just about how much you like a font, it’s also about how you pair it with others, how it fits with your brand, your colours and layouts, etc. Getting the right fonts and its combination will help your brand communicate its values and personality.

Google Fonts is an amazing free resource for designers and developers, it will also recommend the best pairing fonts once you have selected one. The open licence allows personal and commercial use, but remember always to double-check the licence restrictions before using them.