Choosing UI Fonts as a Beginner: Sizes & Typefaces (Part 2)

In Part 1 of this series, we locked down UI color rules; now it’s time to tackle typography — one of the areas where junior designers get stuck in endless decision paralysis chasing “cool” fonts. This post covers exactly which typefaces to use and how to size them so your text always looks intentional.

My name is Lalit Adhikari and we are at LTY. Let’s begin!

Why Fewer Font Choices Make You Faster

Social media constantly pushes lists of “10 amazing fonts,” but if you’re doing UI design rather than general graphic design, you need to ignore those posts. Typography is difficult and the more typefaces you juggle, the higher the chance you’ll pick something that doesn’t function well in an interface.

The 4-Font Method

Pick just four typefaces total, and use only one per individual project — never mix multiple typefaces within the same design. Four is enough variety across different projects while keeping each project internally consistent and safe.

Recommended Safe Typeface List:

• Plus Jakarta Sans
• Inter
• Satoshi
• Poppins
• Ubuntu
• Fira Sans
• Figtree
• Lato
• Muli (Mulish)
• Open Sans
• PT Sans
• Source Sans Pro

Native Platform Fonts

If you’re designing apps that rely on standardized system components, you can also add the native operating system fonts to your rotation: SF Pro for iOS and Roboto for Android. If you want to play it extremely safe, just use these two fonts exclusively, depending on the platform for which you’re designing.

Setting Font Sizes Using the 8-Point Grid

For mobile app design, four sizes are typically enough: 12, 14, 18 and 32. If you prefer more numerical precision, an alternative scale is 12, 16, 20, 24.

Avoid using anything smaller than 12px, with one exception — a bottom navigation menu’s tab labels can go down to 10px. On the large end, going bigger than 32px (or even 24px) on a mobile app is usually unnecessary. For web projects you can generally keep the same scale, but landing pages can add 4 points to smaller sizes and up to 8 points to the largest size.

Now that your fonts and sizes are locked in, Part 3 shifts to icons — another area where inconsistency quietly wrecks otherwise solid UI work. Try picking your four typefaces today and sticking to them across your next few projects.

Last Updated: Sept 2026