The Most Legible Fonts for Long Text

I love fonts. I never really appreciated them before I started designing. Now I love them as much as I love colour palettes. And that’s saying a lot because I really love colour. Just like colour, there are so many font choices out there. So many traits and subtle messages in their curves, blocks and serifs. Unfortunately, having so many choices can sometimes be overwhelming.

Experienced designers will always have an arsenal of go-to legible fonts but sometimes we can find ourselves caught in the “Arial-Helvetiva-MyriadPro” loop using the same fonts over and over, simply because we don’t want to waste time endlessly browsing for the perfect font for that project we’re working on.

Funny enough, a few days before reading this article on Creative Market, my friend Shanice and I found ourselves wondering which fonts would work for lengthy articles while doing a few editorials. So here they are.

The Most Legible Fonts for Super Long Texts

Bambino New

Available in 14 different styles, Bambino New is a geometric, sans-serif font designed for readability. Bambino New has plenty of OpenType features and comes in seven weights including thin, light, bold and heavy.

SmytheSoft Pro

SmytheSoft Pro is a contemporary sans-serif font family that promises easy readability both onscreen and in print. It is a complete design kit that includes a large set of ornaments, symbols and glyphs, with Vietnamese character sets and support for Western, Central and Eastern European languages.

Okojo Pro

The Okojo Pro font family includes not only Okojo Pro, but also Okojo Slab Pro and the Display versions of both. Okojo Pro was designed for easy readability of both long texts and display type, and includes complete character sets for a long list of European languages.

Averta

Available in eight weights, Averta is a geometric, sans-serif font family with styles that can be used both for text sizes and headlines. Neutral and modern, Averta includes true italics and many contextual alternates and symbols, and supports over 200 languages.

RNS Miles

Miles is a geometric sans-serif font family for creating easily readable quotations, headlines and short pieces of text. Available in seven weights, Miles includes alternate glyphs, symbols and old-style figures, and supports an extended Latin character set.

Averta Standard

The basic version of Averta, Averta Standard is a clean, geometric sans-serif font that can be used for headlines as well as text. Averta Standard has eight weights with italics and includes case-sensitive forms, contextual alternates and glyphs.

Corporative Basic Family

Corporative Basic is a semi serif font set for use in larger text sizes. Clean and legible, the Corporative Basic family includes 8 weights with matching italics

Achille II FY Regular

Achille III FY Regular is a slab serif font featuring prominent curved and angled serifs. Well balanced and solid, Achille II is highly legible in small and headline sizes, and comes in four weights with small caps and italics.

Canberra FY Family

A low-contrast, serif typeface, Canberra creates highly legible text for both print and web. Canberra includes six weights for text in small sizes as well as bold headlines, and includes rounded alternates of some letters for a more casual look.

Adriane Text

A serif font family featuring unique typographic features as well as an extensive set of ligatures and ornaments, Adriane Text offers excellent legibility at smaller text sizes. Adriane Text comes in regular and bold with corresponding italics, and has full support for an extended Latin character set that includes Central European diacritics.

Saya Serif FY Family

A thin, lightly condensed font family, Saya Serif is highly legible at all sizes and can be used for both text and display. Featuring sharpened serifs and elegant letter-forms, Saya Serif comes in six weights ranging from thin to black with accompanying italics.

Canberra FY Light

Part of the Canberra FY font family, Canberra FY Light is a highly legible low contrast font suitable for longer texts. Canberra Light features asymmetric, short serifs and a series of rounded alternates for some letters.

Gauthier Next FY Medium

With inspiration from Renaissance typefaces and punch-cutter artwork, Gauthier Next FY is an elegant, old-style serif font with large x-heights. Gauthier FY comes with an extended character set and small caps suitable for text design of all kinds.

Queulat Cnd

A condensed version of Queulat, Queulat Cnd is a hybrid typeface that combines different typography styles for a fresh, strong look. Queulat Cnd comes in 24 styles and features teardrop terminals and a rounded alternative version for a contemporary feel.

HK Serif

Designed for easy reading both on-screen and in print, HK Serif is a clean, legible typeface that can be used for body text as well as headings. Available in four weights, HK Serif comes with small caps, special characters and support for over 40 languages.

Venice Serif

A clean, modern serif font family, Venice Serif has been optimized for on-screen reading. Venice Serif includes four weights with corresponding italics as well as 195 character glyphs. It also comes with a Help file for easy installation.

Carrig Compleat

Carrig Compleat is a classic serif font family that features Roman, Italic, Refined and Rough styles for use in both text and display. It includes all currently available Carrig variants in a single bundle.

Addington CF

With traditional serifs and elements of calligraphy, Addington CF is a versatile font for both large and small text sizes. Addington CF comes in six weights with Roman and italic sets, and includes advanced OpenType features with Latin alphabet support.

URW Geometric Regular

Inspired by German geometric typefaces of the 1920s, URW Geometric is designed for legibility and versatility. With 10 weights and an extensive set of special glyphs, URW Geometric includes alternate character sets and wide Latin language support.

Quincy CF Font Family

Quincy CF is a warm, serif font family. Its medium contrast makes for easier reading as well as display. Available in five weights with accompanying italics, it includes advanced OpenType features, and offers Latin and Cyrillic multilingual support.

The bottom line is that whether you choose serif or sans, fonts for long pieces of text should be clean and uncluttered. These custom fonts from a worldwide community of designers blend functionality and style for a highly legible look.

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Original article on Creative Market.

Links to products in this post:

Bambino New by Mindburger Studio

SmytheSoft Pro by Wordshape

Okojo Pro by Wordshape

Averta typeface by Kostas Bartsokas

RNS Miles by RNS Fonts

Averta Standard Typeface by Kostas Bartsokas

Corporative Basic Family by Latinotype

Achille II FY Regular by BlackFoundry

Canberra FY Family by BlackFoundry