---
title: Choosing a typeface you'll still like in five years
description: Trendy fonts age fast. A practical guide to picking type that stays readable, flexible, and quietly beautiful long after the moment passes.
date: 2026-08-19
category: design
tags: [typography, branding, fonts]
image: ../../assets/posts/typeface.jpg
imageAlt: Close-up of vintage metal letterpress type arranged in a wooden tray
---

Every few years, a typeface becomes inescapable. It shows up on every startup homepage, every coffee shop menu, every wedding invitation. And a few years after that, it starts to look dated in a way that's hard to explain but impossible to ignore.

If you're choosing type for something you want to last, whether that's a brand, a book, or a website, the goal isn't to find the most exciting font. It's to find one you won't be tired of.

## Start with the job

Before looking at a single specimen, ask what the type needs to do. Will it be read in long paragraphs or glanced at in headlines? On screens, on paper, or both? At tiny sizes on a phone, or large on a poster?

A typeface that looks stunning in a 72-point headline may be exhausting across a 2,000-word essay. Most lasting type choices start from function, not mood.

## Qualities that age well

Over the years, I've noticed the typefaces I keep returning to share a few traits:

- **Open shapes.** Letters like *a*, *e*, and *c* have generous openings, which keeps them legible at small sizes.
- **Moderate contrast.** Not too much difference between thick and thin strokes, so the type holds up on a wide range of screens.
- **A full family.** Several weights, true italics, and ideally figures that work in tables. Range gives you flexibility without adding a second font.
- **Restraint.** Distinctive details are lovely, but the more a typeface calls attention to itself, the sooner it becomes associated with a particular moment.

> Good type is like a good chair. You notice it most when it's missing.

## Test it with real words

Font specimens are designed to flatter. "The quick brown fox" tells you very little about how a typeface performs with your actual content.

Set a real paragraph of your own writing. Try a headline with awkward letter combinations. Look at the numbers, the punctuation, the italic. Then print it, view it on your phone, and come back to it the next day. First impressions in type are notoriously unreliable.

## When in doubt, go plain

There's a reason a handful of classic sans-serifs and serifs have stayed in use for decades. They're not the most exciting choices, but they're dependable, well made, and endlessly adaptable.

You can always add personality through color, layout, imagery, and the occasional expressive headline. It's much harder to take personality out of a typeface that has too much of it.

Pick something you could live with for a long time. In five years, you'll be glad you did.