Customer Spotlight: Ruth's Chris Steak House

With more than a 100 locations across the United States, Ruth’s Chris Steak House is known for its premium culinary offerings. The restaurant’s website features large, dramatic photographs showcasing their decidedly well-composed dishes.

However, also interesting is the site’s restrained use of of typography; this aspect is not simply an oversight, but a quiet counterpoint to the image-laden layout of the website. The navigation of the site is set in the Novecento family, designed by Jan Tonellato for Synthview. Top navigation is set in the family’s medium weight of Novocento Wide, while the side nav is set in demibold. This entire sans serif family (it also is available in regular, condensed, and narrow widths, too) has a certain friendliness to it — in contrast to the overtly neutral letterforms of, say, grotesque typefaces.

When the site’s side navigation expands, secondary text is set in Linotype’s Trade Gothic Next Soft Rounded family, designed by Akira Kobayashi. As its namesake implies, the Trade Gothic Soft Rounded designs feature more tempered letterforms than its original Trade Gothic forebears. However, the Trade Gothic Next Soft Rounded family still retains a composed demeanor and subtle sense of authority. Within the content of the site, the same complementary format is present—Novocento for headlines, Trade Gothic Next Soft Rounded for body copy.

The Novecento designs are available in 32 styles, and the Trade Gothic Next Soft Rounded in 9, all through the Fonts.com Web Fonts service.

Ryan Arruda is the Web Content Strategist at Monotype Imaging. Ryan holds a bachelor’s degree in film studies from Clark University, and an MFA in graphic design from RISD.