In my previous posts in this series, I have suggested a way of picking the best base font for a site.
You pick a suitable paragraph from your existing text. You look at the fonts available across systems. You display your paragraph in each possible font—with the versions one under the other on the same page. You keep looking at the display until you can see the one that goes best with the words, and with your specific aims for the site.
What if you want to use more than one font?
More than one base font is a no-no. I think this is pretty well understood now. Mixing fonts so that your pages end up looking like ransom notes is one of the surest sign of a beginner. Nor should you change fonts from page to page. Keeping to a single base font across pages is one of the simplest ways of making sure that your site has a consistent look and feel—that it looks like one site, and not two or three (or six).
On the other hand, using a different font—consistently—for headers, in images, or for special text effects, may well add a bit of life and interest to your pages. Try a few experiments!
