Having picked apart fonts for years over here on Creative Bloq, we're pretty tuned in to the fact that lettering styles can be rather divisive. After all, one designer's fun font (opens in new tab) is another person's Comic Sans (apologies to all the Comic Sans defenders out there).
We like to think that we've noticed some typography trends (opens in new tab) this year, but what we really need is some hard data to give us a glimpse into which fonts people are actually using. Luckily that's just what the team at Icons8 (opens in new tab) have gone and done with its recent study.
The results of this research can be found on the study's straight-talking website, Fonts That People Actually Use (opens in new tab). Priding itself on exposing the cool fonts vs. the best fonts, this research explores which fonts are the most popular, what font combinations are the most effective, and whether or not designers actually follow these trends and rules.
To gather its research, Icons8 analysed more than 900 websites from top Product Hunt startups. By checking the choice of typeface and font combinations on these sites, Icons8 made interesting and occasionally unpredictable findings.
As it happens, Google Fonts lead the way in terms of popularity, font names are often misspelt, and our old friend Comic Sans is nowhere to be seen (apologies again to all the Comic Sans defenders out there.)
As well as finding thousands of different typefaces, Fonts That People Actually Use also narrowed down the top 50 styles and the 50 most common font pairings (opens in new tab). The styles that proved most popular include Open Sans, Roboto, Lato, and Montserrat.
With a wealth of raw data (opens in new tab) to analyse, Icons8's findings are sure to appeal to type fans and data junkies alike.
Related articles:
- The rules of responsive web typography (opens in new tab)
- How to improve your digital typography (opens in new tab)
- The 41 best free web fonts (opens in new tab)
