Selecting a not-so broken font for EMBL-EBI sites
This effort is being done in cordination with EMBL, who is looking to update the core brand font for web and print. For background, and to add feedback, see this discussion
Current goal: Rule out any fonts that are clearly poor choices and to identify possible combinations of font faces and weights.
On this page
Shortlist and scoring
As of 2017-01-27 these are the shortlisted fonts -- in no particular order -- along with the various scoring factors
| Helvetica Neue (current font) |
Calibri | Lato | lucida-sans | open-sans | raleway | roboto | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A variety of weights and styles (light, ultra-light, bold, italic, etc.) | |||||||
| Foreign characters, non-Latin script, e.g. Greek, for scientific notations | |||||||
| Good support for desktop, windows, mac, mobile | |||||||
| Readable at small sizes (data tables and visualisations) | |||||||
| Not too radical a change from Helvetica (using a serif as the primary font is likely not an option as it would blow up too many applications) | |||||||
| Harmonising with Helvetica (the font in the logo) | |||||||
| Huge bonus points for a liberal or open source license | |||||||
| Nice if the font has a little personality (Helvetica, for example, is very generic and does not make our "brand" more recognisable) | |||||||
| Font family offers sans serif and serif font styles | |||||||
| Highly legible, scannable font | |||||||
| Can use the font for print and web* |
Sample implementations
The second option will allow you to compare two options side-by-side.
Impact page
Captures a good mix of editorial content under various type styles.
Left image
Select a font from the list above
Right image