How To Pick A Font For Your Brand
Fonts have unique characters. While they may not be showy or fancy, they are also one of the components that reflect your organisation’s nature. It would be best if you chose them sensibly. The type of fonts you choose will significantly impact how your brand interacts with its audience.
The kind of fonts you choose for your brand should:
- Be notable
- Reflect your brand’s character
- Be readable
- Be memorable
With the following tips, you cannot go wrong when picking a font for your brand:
Have a grasp of your brand’s identity.
Knowing your brand’s character will make choosing an appropriate font for your brand easier. Every component of your brand: colour, logo, fonts, etc., should align with your brand’s personality.
Get to know about the different character traits of fonts.
Fonts have different categories. Every category has its particular traits. You must understand and learn about these fonts to make the best choice for your brand. With various fonts available on the internet, selecting an appropriate font for your brand is challenging.
Take a look at the five primary types of fonts.
- Serif
- Sans serif
- Slab serif
- Script
- Decorative
Serif Fonts
Serif fonts are considered the oldest and most traditional type of fonts. The small decorative line at the end of a character’s stroke is called a ‘serif.’ The most common font would be the ‘Times New Roman,’ which is the default font for Microsoft word users. Serif fonts are classic, trustworthy, legible. Many brands favour this font, and it is a common choice for many renowned brands.
Serif fonts communicate with an air of confidence and elegance. Some famous brands that use serif fonts to create their logos are ‘Vogue,’ ‘New York Times,’ ‘Harper’s Bazaar,’ ‘Elle Magazine,’ etc. These brands have had the same logo for an extended period proving that serif fonts are timeless.
Some commonly used serif fonts include:
- Times New Roman
- Garamond
- Baskerville
- Georgia
- Courier New
Sans Serif
Sans serif fonts are considered modern and clean fonts. They are similar to serif fonts, but they are more simple. They do not have decorative finishing strokes. They are more casual and can give brands that use sans serif fonts a laid-back appearance. Panasonic, Jeep, Toyota, Netflix, and Facebook are among the most popular companies using this font.
Choosing sans serif font will be the best choice if you want to give your brand a modern or sophisticated look. Some famous sans serif fonts include:
- Helvetica
- Arial
- Roboto
- Open sans
Slab Serif
Slab Serif fonts are a part of the serif font family. For brands that want to make a bold statement, slab serif fonts would be the best choice. They are blockier and more extensive as compared to the traditional serif fonts. We use slab serif mostly for display purposes like posters, headlines, etc. Popular companies like Sony, Honda use this type of font. The most common sans serif fonts are:
- Sentinel
- Adelle
- Clarendon
- Archer
Script
Script fronts are usually more formal and are similar to cursive handwriting. It has loops and decorative curls and can appear fancy, trendy as well as relaxed. Johnson & Johnson, Instagram, Cadillac are some of the companies that use this font. Script fonts include:
- Allura
- Dancing Script
- Lucida Script
- Brush Script MT
Decorative
We don’t use Decorative fonts often. We usually use them for custom made logos. This type of fonts uses different shapes and proportions like graffiti fonts. Some famous examples of decorative fonts are Disney, Lego, IBM. Popular decorative fonts include:
- Advio
- Betron
- Aleecia
- Wicken Park
Understand what type of font will suit your brand
You need to choose a font that’s practical for your brand and something that works best for your brand’s personality. Some fonts may not be appropriate for the message you want to convey, so you have to pick accordingly. For instance, if your business is of wedding photography, script font would be a fitting choice of font.
Free fonts
There are free fonts library available like:
- Font Squirrel
- Font Library
- Google Fonts
While they may be readily available and may serve you well, some characters or symbols may be missing. Free font libraries offer only a limited set of fonts. On the other hand, you can also pay for premium fonts which are more bespoke, customised and will generally include every character, symbol and letter you need. Libraries for paid fonts include:
- Adobe Fonts
- Linotype
- Fonts.com
Paid fonts offer a more comprehensive range of fonts; however, they can be expensive. You can go for either of the fonts- free or paid, keeping your brand’s identity in mind. If you are having your business website developed, it’s important to keep in-mind that you will have to supply these fonts to your web developers. If you are using free fonts this will be simple enough, but if it is a paid font then it will depend on your license of use and you may have to purchase the font again so that the website design company can use it when they create your website.
What you should avoid
One of the essential rules is to pick fonts that are legible and clear. Avoid going for fonts that appear messy or fonts that tire the eyes after an extended reading period. Just because some brands are exceptionally well with some fonts doesn’t necessarily mean you have to use them. In the end, what type of message you want to convey to your audience is what matters. Avoid choosing fonts that are closely similar to other brands.
Choose flexible fonts
It is essential to be consistent. So when you pick a font, you’re likely to be associated with it for as long as possible. Choose a font that will suit any medium and one that will remain timeless.
Use multiple font weights
Light, regular, bold, semi-bold are what you call multiple font weights (or you can set your own custom font weight using the CSS property, conveniently named font-weight.) Using various font weights will make your message clearer and easier to understand. It would be best if you had numerous font weights to point out headers, sub-headers, body text.
Your fonts must be readable for everyone
This is crucial. The type of font you use should be easily readable. Your brand’s font will tell your brand’s story along with the other components needed for creating a brand.
Much like any other element of brand designing, picking the right front is equally essential.
Have a unique brand personality and spend a fair amount of time learning about it. Each font represents different qualities. They emit different emotions. Understanding their unique traits, you have to choose the ones that match your intentions wisely. Now that you’ve understood the different fonts and how to choose the right one, you’ll have no trouble creating your brand and choosing which fonts are best to use in your branding!
