Customize Twenty Fifteen With More Than 650 Fonts With Typecase

Typecase Featured ImageThe new WordPress default theme, Twenty Fifteen, looks great and provides a lot of flexibility, but one thing it lacks is the option to customize fonts. A free plugin called Typecase, by UpThemes, solves this problem by giving users easy access to over 650 different fonts.

Typecase uses the Google webfonts library, which has slowly increased in the past few years, making it a popular resource among theme developers.

Getting Started

Start by downloading and activating Typecase from the WordPress plugin directory. After it’s activated, look for the Typecase admin menu. While on the settings screen, scroll to the bottom and browse through the list of available fonts. You won’t be able to apply fonts through the Theme customizer unless you select a few font families.

Typecast Configuration Page
Typecast Configuration Page

After you select a few fonts, click the save button. Browse to the customizer via Appearance > Customize and select the Theme Fonts panel.

Theme Fonts Panel
Theme Fonts Panel

From here you’ll be able to assign fonts you selected in Typecase to various elements of the site such as, the sidebar, content, site title, site description, etc. Once you find a font that you like, click the Save and Publish button to see the changes on the live site.

Beyond The Customizer

If you’d like to assign a font to a specific CSS Selector, you can add one from the Typecase settings page. This enables you to customize fonts for any theme without writing code or modifying your theme in any way.

Typecase CSS Selectors
Typecase CSS Selectors

Add Typecase Support to Any Theme

Typecase has built-in support for every default theme since Twenty Ten. However, if you’d like to add support to a custom theme, you’ll need to follow these directions as it involves adding a few lines of code.

If you’re using any of the default themes available for WordPress, Typecase is an easy way to expand the customization options available to you. With over 650 fonts to choose from, the hardest part of using it is deciding which ones to use.

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8 responses to “Customize Twenty Fifteen With More Than 650 Fonts With Typecase”

  1. “With over 650 fonts to choose from, the hardest part of using it is deciding which ones to use.”

    Which is why this approach is cr*p if you DO care about user experience.

    Know what? 650 fonts sounds good but that’s it. What plugin and theme developers absolutely refuse to hear is the vast amount of users actually asking for “easy typography”, that is to say pre- and well-made combos because, guess what, they don’t know how to do that right.

    So they Google that and end up using combos others have been using.

    Even worse, there are Google fonts which you should not use at all for body copy and those fonts make for a large part of the catalogue.

    So why not diving a duck about user experience, developers? You know that may harder to sell than the 650 number, you don’t know how wrong you actually are believing that. I can guarantee a plugin/theme with combos will be a hit.

    • @John I totally understand your position. I am a designer first and my #1 priority is to provide people with beautiful custom-set typography within all our WordPress themes at UpThemes. We actually include a license for fonts from Typekit in some of our new themes, which limits the user to fonts which are very specifically selected for each theme. Typecase is merely a customization option for users who may not want the fonts we’ve hand-selected for their theme or are using a different theme and they want to override the fonts within it. Just like anything in the world, it can be abused, but I’m sure this plugin is more helpful than harmful.

      Thanks for your vigilance in upholding the beauty of typography on the web. I certainly appreciate your spirit.

  2. What plugin and theme developers absolutely refuse to hear is the vast amount of users actually asking for “easy typography”, that is to say pre- and well-made combos because, guess what, they don’t know how to do that right.
    ______________________________________
    imran

  3. Is there a plugin that can select a font that is available from a local folder on your site? The cumbersom alternative would be to make a wp child theme out of wp/ twenty-fifthteen and then edit the style.css. Hope to avoid that.

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