What Twitter’s Chirp taught us about the importance of web font type design

Twitter’s new user experience with its Chirp font has netizens making memes, fuming about an unpleasant experience, and complaining about headaches. We speak to a few UX designers about why typography in online spaces matter

Over the past few days, the word ‘chirp’ became a source of chat for netizens. Twitter’s opinion-dividing font named Chirp was rolled out to its app and feed during the week of August 10. The quirky type incensed many netizens who could not figure out why they hated the font or even why it gave them headaches. This naturally fuelled a groundswell of online searches such as ‘why does font design matter’ or ‘why do I feel queasy reading a certain font.’ (Subscribe to our Today's Cache newsletter for a quick snapshot of top 5 tech stories. Click to subscribe for free.) Fonts matter. In the context of tone, it relies on the placement of each pixel within a letter or character which then forms the design and structure of the type itself.