As a web designer in 2026, typography is one of the most impactful elements of your design toolkit. Custom fonts create brand identity, improve readability, and set the emotional tone for websites. However, web fonts also represent one of the largest performance bottlenecks on modern websites, often accounting for 100-300KB of page weight and causing layout shifts that hurt user experience and search rankings.
The key to successful web typography lies in proper font conversion and optimization. This guide walks you through the complete workflow for converting fonts for web projects, from selecting the right output format to implementing advanced loading strategies that satisfy both design requirements and Core Web Vitals performance metrics.
Whether you're working with client brand fonts, open-source typefaces, or commercially licensed font families, understanding font conversion is essential for delivering high-performance websites that don't compromise on design quality.
Why Web Designers Need Font Conversion
Most fonts you receive from clients or purchase from foundries come in desktop formats like TTF (TrueType) or OTF (OpenType). While these formats work on desktop applications like Figma, Sketch, and Adobe Creative Cloud, they're not optimized for web delivery. Desktop fonts are typically 50-200KB per weight, which multiplies quickly when you need Regular, Bold, Italic, and Bold Italic variants.
Web-specific formats like WOFF2 use advanced compression algorithms specifically designed for font data. Converting a 150KB TTF file to WOFF2 typically results in a 40-60KB file—a 60-70% reduction without any loss in visual quality. When combined with subsetting, you can achieve 90%+ reductions, turning that 150KB font into a 15KB file that loads almost instantly.
Typical File Size Comparison
Original TTF
150 KB
Desktop format
WOFF2 Converted
52 KB
65% smaller
WOFF2 + Subset
14 KB
91% smaller
Choosing the Right Web Font Format in 2026
The web font landscape has simplified significantly. In 2026, WOFF2 has achieved universal browser support and should be your primary format for all web projects. According to Can I Use, WOFF2 now works in 97%+ of browsers globally, including all modern versions of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge.
2026 Recommendation
Use WOFF2 as your only format unless you need to support Internet Explorer 11 or very old Safari versions. The legacy WOFF fallback is no longer necessary for most projects.
For projects requiring legacy browser support, you can use a progressive enhancement approach with WOFF as a fallback. However, this is increasingly rare—most clients are comfortable dropping support for browsers that don't support WOFF2, especially since those browsers also lack support for other modern CSS features.
You can compare the differences between formats in our WOFF vs WOFF2 comparison guide to understand why WOFF2's Brotli compression outperforms WOFF's zlib compression by 20-30%.
Web Designer Font Conversion Workflow
Follow this step-by-step workflow to convert fonts for your web projects:
Step 1: Verify Font Licensing
Before converting any font, verify that your license permits web embedding. Desktop licenses typically don't include web usage rights. Check with the foundry or review the license agreement. Most commercial fonts require a separate web license based on page views or domains.
Read our font licensing guide for detailed information on license types.
Step 2: Convert to WOFF2
Upload your TTF or OTF files to our TTF to WOFF2 converter or OTF to WOFF2 converter. The conversion preserves all font features including kerning pairs, ligatures, and OpenType features. For batch conversions, use our batch conversion tool.
Step 3: Subset for Your Character Set
Most web projects only use Latin characters. Use our font subsetter tool to remove unused glyphs. For English-only sites, a Latin Basic subset (A-Z, a-z, 0-9, common punctuation) reduces file size by 70-80%. For multilingual sites, use Latin Extended to include accented characters.
Step 4: Generate CSS @font-face
Use our CSS @font-face generator to create optimized CSS declarations. Include font-display: swap to prevent invisible text during loading, and specify unicode-range if you're using multiple subset files.
Step 5: Implement Preloading
Add preload hints for your most critical fonts to improve LCP scores. Use <link rel="preload" as="font" type="font/woff2" crossorigin> in your document head for fonts that appear above the fold.
Performance Optimization Strategies
Font loading directly impacts Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS), two of Google's Core Web Vitals metrics. Poor font loading can cause Flash of Invisible Text (FOIT) or Flash of Unstyled Text (FOUT), both of which hurt user experience. Learn more about these issues in our FOUT/FOIT solutions guide.
Font Loading Best Practices
- Limit font weights: Use 2-3 weights maximum (e.g., Regular, Bold). Each additional weight adds load time.
- Use variable fonts: A single variable font file can replace multiple static weights.
- Self-host fonts: Avoid third-party font services to eliminate additional DNS lookups and potential CORS issues.
- Subset aggressively: If you know exactly which characters your site uses, create a custom subset.
The font-display CSS property controls how fonts render during loading. For most web design projects, font-display: swap provides the best balance between performance and visual stability. This shows fallback text immediately and swaps to the custom font when it loads.
@font-face {
font-family: 'Brand Font';
src: url('/fonts/brand-font.woff2') format('woff2');
font-weight: 400;
font-style: normal;
font-display: swap;
unicode-range: U+0000-00FF, U+0131, U+0152-0153;
}Common Font Conversion Mistakes to Avoid
Loading Too Many Weights
Each font file adds HTTP requests and bytes. A family with Regular, Italic, Bold, Bold Italic, Light, and Medium adds 300-600KB. Limit to essential weights only.
Ignoring Fallback Fonts
Always specify fallback fonts in your font-family stack. Use system fonts that closely match your custom font to minimize layout shift when swapping occurs.
Not Testing on Slow Connections
Use Chrome DevTools to throttle your connection to 3G speeds. This reveals font loading issues that aren't visible on fast connections.
Forgetting CORS Headers
When serving fonts from a CDN or different domain, ensure proper CORS headers are configured. Missing headers cause fonts to fail silently.
Recommended Tools for Web Designers
TTF to WOFF2 Converter
Convert TrueType fonts to optimized WOFF2 format
OTF to WOFF2 Converter
Convert OpenType fonts to web-ready WOFF2
Font Subsetter
Remove unused characters to reduce file size
CSS @font-face Generator
Generate optimized CSS for your web fonts
External Resources
- Web.dev Font Best Practices - Google's official guide to web font optimization
- MDN @font-face Documentation - Complete reference for CSS font loading
- CSS-Tricks @font-face Guide - Practical examples and tutorials
Written & Verified by
Sarah Mitchell
Product Designer, Font Specialist
Related Use Cases
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