Is it important to maintain consistency even at the expense of aesthetics?

Question

I'm working on a website at the moment which has been using one particular font family since the beginning of time. Problem is that when the font weight becomes bold, the font's ugliness increases by 200%. It looks aesthetically pleasing in it's regular format but not bold.

I've suggested accompanying the current font family with a more aesthetically pleasing, lighter font which looks great in it's bold state and regular state, however another designer was against the idea because it won't be consistent.

Any suggestions on how to approach this situation?

Answer 1

Choosing a font for its aesthetic properties without considering its function or context doesn't sound like a wise choice.

In the case the company wasn't publicly associated with that particular font (consistency issues with a logo, printed material, etc.), I would definitely choose the most legible, the one your users will read better, faster and more comfortably.

I would ask my colleague to evaluate similar fonts that are more readable when bold, italic and underlined.

Answer 2

If you're only trying to be consistent across all the web fonts, then you probably want to look at swapping them all out. Find a font that has all the benefits of the current one and which avoids the pitfalls, and make a proposal. Make show some examples of some pages using this new font family to get buy-in.

If you're trying to be consistent with other non-web collateral, then your problem is more complicated. If you're trying to be consistent with the font in the company logo, I don't think you should let that be a constraint.

As mentioned above, this is not purely an aesthetic decision, but should be all about readability.

Answer 3

I agree that legibility is more important than being consistent with font. Perhaps, the company could consider decreasing the weight of the bold font. This way it will be the same font type but less heavy and more readable. If you truly believe that the current bold font looks bad but others don't agree, I would suggest running a little user test. You could present the same design to your users using different fonts and see which font wins.