The Ultimate Guide to Choosing Your Brand Fonts

Handwritten fonts help businesses communicate with their audience more personally, as if the message was written specifically to them. They tend to evoke feelings of authenticity and friendliness that can be both playful and elegant, depending on the style and how it’s used. Handwritten fonts, also called modern fonts, are cursive font types that turned into digital typography. Handwritten fonts are also script fonts, but they have become so popular that we thought they deserved a category of their own.

how to choose fonts

As long as the project works for the client and audience, an unconventional font choice can be effective. All of these elements play into establishing enough contrast to ensure that fonts are readable and set the right tone for your project. It’s not uncommon to put it all together and then decide to up the font-weight just a little bit to ensure ample contrast. If you use a lot of different typefaces regularly, a library can be a good option. While there are a lot of important considerations in choosing a font for a design project, nothing matters quite as much as personality.

Want to learn more about type and design?

Still, they are not meant to be used in body text as they’re not easy to read. When choosing a font or typeface for your project, it’s crucial to first identify its core elements. Whether it’s a theme, a visual motif, or an atmosphere or feeling, try to zone in on the core of your project to build your design around. Once you’ve determined the theme, you can then choose a font to either enhance or contrast with it – depending on what effect you’re trying to achieve.

how to choose fonts

Design visual brand experiences for your business whether you are a seasoned designer or a total novice. Now, let’s have a look at some font pairings that work best for different brand personalities. Additionally, here are 100 best free fonts to help you find the right one for your brand. If you have a tight budget for branding, free fonts can be a great choice. They will not cost you a single thing and come with free licenses. With the endless options for free fonts, you will still have the quality and diversity in your texts.

What is the most popular font?

Anything more than that can be too much and overwhelming for both your brand and target audience. Slab serif fonts (or slab fonts) are a subset of serifs with unique slab features. As the name suggests, these fonts are large and bold, making them look like slabs. They are characterized by their bold and solid approach, which helps convey confidence, creativity and dependability. The trick to using fonts effectively is to focus on high contrast options.

how to choose fonts

Typography is a subtle art, but less elusive than its reputation might suggest. If you’ve already given some thought to the organization of your project, its scope, and its audience, you’re primed to make smart typographic choices. A type family should appear consistent, even harmonious across different scripts—which is no small feat.

Large Font Families

What you don’t want is two typefaces that seem to “say” different things. A good font pairing includes typefaces with complementary shapes so that they bring attention to the message but don’t compete for attention. Understanding the intention behind the design will dictate your font choices. This is something Ran expands on this video on how to choose fonts. If you’re designing a brand or a website for a client, are they in an industry where they need a lot of trust from their customer? In the same example, maybe you’re creating a site for a cryptocurrency app.

how to choose fonts

Not every website or design project will be translated into multiple languages. But it’s a good idea to determine at the start of a project whether translation is likely. Not all typefaces support special characters (like those that are accented), let alone alphabets like Cyrillic and Greek. If a font will only be used for a single project, then it’s easy to determine whether print or screen functionality is most important. But for fonts that might be used over multiple projects, designers should make sure the font will work in every medium in which it may be used.

Sans Serif Fonts

Netflix Sans comes in various weights, such as light, thin, medium, regular, bold and black. Choose slab font if you want to make a big splash or indicate how innovative your products and ideas are. While many fonts have general licenses that allow for use in virtually any situation, others do not. Others allow for use in promotional materials but might now allow for use on a product being sold. You’d be surprised at how many people gloss over this part of using fonts, even though it’s arguably the most important.

  • Consider that opposites can work well together by creating contrast, so perhaps you want to try a simple, serif font with a more futuristic sans serif option.
  • Script fonts add a lot of visual interest to brand personality due to their elegant, creative and intuitive look.
  • Sometimes this technical consideration will result in choosing multiple sets of fonts – one for print and one for the web – with a similar look and feel.
  • It’d be a little awkward to use thick, blocky text on a dainty wedding invitation.

Think about what information is the most important, and make it the most prominent out of all the typography. Spice things up by using a few different font styles that complement or have stylistic contrast to each other. It can be confusing to look at a graphic that uses too many different fonts. Typefaces can have geometric or organic attributes in their shape. One of the most well-known geometric typefaces is Futura, notice how open and round the O is in this poster design example.

Brands That Developed Their Own Fonts

Combine them both to create a contrast while staying on the safe side. Alternatively, thin and stylized sans serif fonts communicate an elegant, sophisticated and expensive personality. Also known as display fonts, decorative fonts are appealing and unique typefaces. You can’t get more creative than these fonts while creating a typographic brand name.

how to choose fonts

Once the scope of the project has been defined, the other considerations—such as mood, versatility, message, and brand—can guide designers toward the best font choices. Other considerations like readability, functionality, and language support can help designers further refine those choices to find the perfect font for their design work. choosing fonts for website Whether you find these words inspiring or intimidating, the plain fact is that the right typographic choice always reflects the specific needs of the project itself. Certain fonts work best in headlines, while others read well in paragraphs. Some font families are large enough to include international scripts and special characters.

Brands like Rolex, Tiffany & Co., Prada, Gucci, Vogue and many others use serif fonts in their branding. As a business owner, you might have already defined the brand voice that helps you build a strong connection with your consumers. So, understanding the message each font conveys will make the process of choosing fonts easier for you. While the traditional standards of ‘good’ design have stood the test of time for a reason, if you want to stand out, it can pay to do things a little differently.