Trending Typographies 2023

The interesting thing about type this year was not a new trend but an old one becoming affordable. Variable fonts stopped being a demo and started being the default: one file, every weight, and an optical size axis that makes a 12px caption and a 72px headline look like they belong to the same family, because they finally do.

Display type went in the opposite direction: narrower, higher contrast, and unafraid of an odd terminal. It photographs beautifully in a hero and falls apart at 16px, which is exactly the point. Pick one for the headline and one for everything else, and do not let them meet.

The quiet story is body copy. Fluid type using `clamp()` finally shipped everywhere, so the days of a 14px paragraph on a phone and a 14px paragraph on a 27-inch monitor are over. Set a comfortable measure of 60 to 75 characters, let the size follow the viewport, and most of the legibility argument disappears.

My own default for a personal site has not changed much: one grotesque for the interface, one voice for the headline, and a lot of restraint about how many weights ship. Every extra weight is a real download for someone on a slow connection.