
## Adding custom fonts to your website is a typical requirement for most web projects

By default, Next.js sites will add small set of fonts that you can use for your sites (in addition to the default fonts for a given browser). That can be useful to get started quickly, but for most custom site designs, you'll need to add custom fonts and typefaces that fit your site's brand and design guidelines.

In this tutorial, you'll learn how to **add custom fonts to your Next.js site using the `next/font` package and Tailwind CSS**. There's a few configuration steps needed to load fonts from Google Fonts using `next/font`, generate CSS variables for each font, and then use those variables to create custom font families in your Tailwind config.

With this setup, you'll be able to easily use your custom fonts throughout your Next.js app using Tailwind's utility classes.

### SEO Benefits of using custom fonts correctly on your Next.js site

In addition to improving the user experience, implementing custom fonts on your website can also have a [positive impact on your Lighthouse scores](https://web.dev/patterns/web-vitals-patterns/fonts/) and SEO. However, it's important to implement custom fonts carefully to avoid performance issues. Using too many or too large font files can slow down your site's loading time and hurt your Lighthouse performance score. Additionally, using custom fonts in a way that affects the visual stability of the page can result in lower scores for Core Web Vitals, which can impact your SEO. So, it's important to strike a balance between using custom fonts to enhance the design and ensuring that they don't negatively impact performance or user experience.

### About next/font

[`next/font` is an npm package](https://nextjs.org/docs/api-reference/next/font) developed by Vercel, which provides an easy way to load fonts in your Next.js app, while maintaing performance, and minimizing [Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)](https://web.dev/optimize-cls/). It uses the Font Loading API to asynchronously load local font files stored in your repo, or from popular font providers such as Google Fonts, Typekit, and Fonts.com. The package also generates optimized font subsets to reduce the amount of data transferred over the network, and it provides a convenient way to generate CSS variables for each font, which can be used to create custom font families in your [Tailwind config](https://tailwindcss.com/docs/configuration). This makes it easy to use custom fonts throughout your Next.js app with minimal configuration.

## How to: Add multiple custom fonts to your Next.js site with Tailwind CSS

There are several ways to load custom fonts into your next.js app. If you're using a Google Fonts as your custom font provider, you can use the `next/font/google` package to load fonts from Google Fonts. The process is slightly different for loading font files that are stored locally in your repo, but the basic steps are the same:

### Load custom fonts from Google Fonts

In `_app.jsx/tsx`, load your the fonts you need from `next/font/google`, but use the `variable` configuration prop, which you will use to generate a definition for a CSS `--var` for each font:

```tsx
import { Barlow_Condensed, Inter } from 'next/font/google';
const barlowCondensed = Barlow_Condensed({
  weight: '700',
  subsets: ['latin'],
  variable: '--font-barlow-condensed',
});
const inter = Inter({
  subsets: ['latin'],
  variable: '--font-inter',
});
```

### Load custom fonts from a local file

This next example shows how you would load a font from a local file. It also showcases another feature of the `next/fonts` library - you can map font weights to different files as needed. This also applies for font _styles_ (italic, bold, etc).

In `_app.jsx/tsx`, load your the fonts you need from `next/font/local` using the syntax below. Note that in this case, font files in my repo are also being hosted in `/public/fonts` directory. Again, make sure to use the `variable` configuration prop, which you will use to generate a definition for a CSS `--var` for each font:

```tsx
import localFont from 'next/font/local';

const grosa = localFont({
  src: [
    {
      path: '../../public/fonts/Grosa/Grosa-Regular.woff2',
      weight: '500',
      style: 'normal',
    },
    {
      path: '../../public/fonts/Grosa/Grosa-Medium.woff2',
      weight: '600',
      style: 'normal',
    },
    {
      path: '../../public/fonts/Grosa/Grosa-Bold.woff2',
      weight: '700',
      style: 'normal',
    },
  ],
  variable: '--font-grosa',
});
```

### After loading custom fonts, generate CSS variables for each font

Then, in that same `_app.tsx` component - pass the generated variables into the wrapper class. This will make that variable available to any child of that element in the DOM (in other words, your whole app):

```tsx
export default function MyApp({ Component, pageProps }) {
  return (
    <main
      className={`${inter.variable} ${barlowCondensed.variable} ${grosa.variable}`}
    >
      <Component {...pageProps} />
    </main>
  );
}
```

Behind the scenes, next is generates unique css classes for each font permutation. These classes do one thing: they define a [css custom property](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/Using_CSS_custom_properties) (sometimes called a css variable) for each font.

By adding the resulting CSS classes to the root of your Next.js app, these variables are made available to any child of the `App` component - essentially all pages and components on your site.

<Image
  publicId="posts/custom-fonts-with-next-font-and-tailwind/classes"
  caption="is a screenshot from Chrome Browser tools for Craftwork.com, which is built using this setup"
  alt="screenshot of chrome browser tools showing the resulting CSS classes"
/>

### Use these variables your Tailwind config to create font families

Up to this point, we've loaded our custom fonts into our Next.js app, and we've made those fonts available to our entire app using CSS variables. Now, we need to tell Tailwind how to use these variables, by assigning them to specific font-family classes.

In your Tailwind config, add an entry to your `theme.extend`, to create a new font family that uses the google fonts you just imported - that will look something like this:

```tsx
// tailwind.config.js
export default {
  theme: {
    extend: {
      fontFamily: {
        "barlow-condensed": "var(--font-barlow-condensed)", // note: you can call the left side of this whatever you want - barlow-bold or title-font or foo-bar, this is what you'll use in your Tailwind css classes to use this font
        "inter-medium": "var(--font-inter)", // note: the bit that goes inside the var() function is the same variable name we defined in app.tsx
      }
    }
  }
```

Then, whenever you want to use the fonts you've added, ask for that font-family in your tailwind classnames by prefixing the font-family with "font-", like this:

```tsx
const myComponent: React.FC = () => (
  <p className="font-barlow-condensed">
    This should be rendered with the Barlow font family
  </p>
);

export default myComponent;
```

That should do the trick!

If you're wondering where these steps came from, it is essentially a combination of the instructions provided in [Next's docs for Font Optimization](https://nextjs.org/docs/basic-features/font-optimization). My team is using this very configuration setup for our Next.js site on [Craftwork.com](https://craftwork.com) to load custom fonts both locally and from Google Fonts, and it's been working great.


Add custom fonts to Next.js sites with Tailwind using next/font


## Semantic HTML makes your sites better

Semantic HTML is important because it helps improve the accessibility of a web page and makes the code more readable. Semantic elements are those that clearly describe their meaning in a way that is easy for both humans and machines to understand.

Search engines can more easily parse and understand semantic HTML, [which can help improve your website's SEO](https://developers.google.com/style/semantic-tagging). Semantic HTML uses tags to describe the meaning of content on a page, rather than just its presentation. This can help search engines better understand the content of a page and index it appropriately.

### Using h2 as a subtitle for an h1 is incorrect

According to the [html spec](https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/dom.html#heading-content-2), `h1` through `h6` tags are meant to indicate the structure of a document. In other words, each page should have at most 1 `<h1>` tag, and `<h2>` elements should be _sub-sections_ of that `h1` - not additional descriptions for it.

This [warning from the HTML spec](https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/dom.html#sectioning-content) does a great job of explaining it:

> For example, the following snippet, intended to represent the heading of a corporate site, is non-conforming because the second line is not intended to be a heading of a subsection, but merely a subheading or subtitle (a subordinate heading for the same section).
>
> ```html
> <body>
>   <h1>ACME Corporation</h1>
>   <h2>The leaders in arbitrary fast delivery since 1920</h2>
>   ...
> </body>
> ```

(07/05/2022) As of the time of this writing, whatwg goes on to recommend use of `hgroup` in its solution. [According to MDN](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/hgroup#usage_notes), hgroup should not be used, as it is not supported by assistive technologies needed for accesible reading of HTML sites.

## Use this code to add subtitles to headings

The correct semantic structure of HTML for a heading with a subtitle is straightforward - nest your `<h1>`, etc with in a `<header>` tag, and include a `<p>` tag with an appropriate class name as a sibling to that `h1`:

```html
<header>
  <h1>How to bootstrap a product as a solo founder</h1>
  <p class="tagline">
    Important lessongs learned from building 10 products on my own in 2 years
  </p>
</header>
```

For more details on this, check out [MDN docs on the header tag](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/header), and their [semantics section](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/Semantics).

### 🚨 UPDATE: I was wrong! 🚨

The first version of this article was wrong! I previously recommended using the `<hgroup>` tag as per the whatwg spec, but I was corrected by [@AnalyticsEqv](https://twitter.com/AnalyticsEqv) on twitter:

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
  <p lang="en" dir="ltr">
    MDN specifically recommends against &lt;hgroup&gt; because assistive
    technologies don&#39;t support it.
  </p>
  &mdash; EQV Analytics 🇺🇦 (@AnalyticsEqv) <a href="https://twitter.com/AnalyticsEqv/status/1544328749272993792?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 5, 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8" />

Thanks for the correction! I definitely get things wrong sometimes, and I'm always happy to correct myself when appropriate.

## Did you find this helpful?

You might also like these other articles I've written:

- [How to run dependabot locally on your projects](https://mikebifulco.com/posts/run-dependabot-locally)
- [No Floating Promises: an eslint rule to prevent async code errors](https://mikebifulco.com/posts/eslint-no-floating-promises)
- [JavaScript tips: nullish coalescing](https://mikebifulco.com/posts/nullish-coalescing-javascript)

If you want to hear more from me, consider subscribing to my newsletter 👇🏼


The correct semantic HTML for adding subtitles to h1 tags


## Earlier today, we had a problem at [Gymnasium](https://thegymnasium.com).

We released a [new 5 minute tutorial on Making Headings and Lists more Accessible](https://thegymnasium.com/courses/take5/making-headings-and-lists-more-accessible) - which is great news! If you build things for the web, and you've got 5 minutes to spare in your day (you do), you should give it a look.

After the course was made public, our marketing wizard did her magic and started posting to our various social media pages: [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/aquentgymnasium), [Twitter](https://twitter.com/AquentGymnasium), and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/school/gymnasium/).

It was immediately apparent that something was off. During our course release process, we missed the fact that Open Graph metadata for that course page wasn't correctly included. Unfortunately, that meant that _none_ of our posts on social media had the beautiful image previews that we'd expect to see (and by extension would likely see far less engagement).

<Aside>
  <em>Open Graph</em> metadata tells other services what kind of information is
  shown when a URL loads, so that they can create a preview of the URL that
  makes sense. Read more at{' '}
  <a href="https://ogp.me" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">
    ogp.me
  </a>
  .
</Aside>

Fast forward a short while, and we updated our CMS with the necessary metadata for Open Graph Shares to work correctly. Newly shared links in our team Slack now looked great!

<Image
  publicId="posts/open-graph-cache-reset/slack-after"
  alt="screenshot of a post in slack"
  caption="Screenshot from slack after the fix - our new course was shared with the correct image"
/>
.

## Social networks cache link previews

Rather than redownload the preview image and metadata for a given link every time it's shared, your entire open graph preview is often cached. Depending on the site, that cache may be cleared regularly throughout the day.

Because we had _already_ posted links to our courses, every site we had shared to had cached our shared links with the bare defaults. The result was relatively plain, and not relevant to the content on the page - something like:

`Free online courses on design and web development | Gymnasium`

With Gymnasium's logo beside it. Just defaults! Not a great look.

Because we were working on a concerted marketing push to announce our new courses, these extremely plain previews were bad news. We've seen from experience that having an attractive (and differentiated) share image helps gain traction during the initial publicity of new content.

## _You_ can trigger a cache reset on each of these sites!

After some brief research, we found that there are tools to reset the cache on each of the major social networking sites. They're each extremely easy to use - paste your URL in a box, click a button, and reset the cache if necessary. Here's the ones we found to be useful:

### Use these links

- **Facebook Sharing Debugger**: [https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/](https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/)
- **LinkedIn Post Inspector**: [https://www.linkedin.com/post-inspector/](https://www.linkedin.com/post-inspector/)
- **Twitter Card Validator**: [https://cards-dev.twitter.com/validator](https://cards-dev.twitter.com/validator)

That's all there is to it! Hit reset, re-share your link, and you should see your latest Open Graph preview shared. Phew! 😅


#seo: 3 posts tagged

Add custom fonts to Next.js sites with Tailwind using next/font

The correct semantic HTML for adding subtitles to h1 tags

How to reset your Open Graph embed on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook