Fonts for a Brand
Choosing fonts for a brand is as important as the logo design or color palette selection. Fonts (a.k.a. typefaces) have personality, they can be fancy or formal, decorative, simple, bold, or subtle. The right font will represent your brand’s mission and appeal to your target audience.
Be trendy or be smart. There are a lot of popular styles right now that use calligraphy and hand-lettering. They are fine, but before choosing them think what will happen when the trend changes. As with all other brand elements, it is not what you like today, it is what your target audience will appreciate for years to come. Using more timeless typefaces will help you remain relevant longer.
Fonts Can Talk
No, I don’t suffer from auditory hallucinations. Fonts can talk, and their voices can be very different. Just look at the picture, and imagine walking into a room where fonts are having a lively conversation.
Curlz MT is cracking jokes, while Century Schoolbook is lecturing about the history of law in a scholarly manner. Montserrat is explaining something to everyone while blending in without making too much of a fuss, and Playbill is reminiscing about the good times at a campfire after a horse ride… Picking the right typeface for a brand is like choosing the right spokesperson.
So, make sure you pick a font that speaks the right language for your audience — after all, nobody wants to be the business that’s accidentally using Spooky Stories to announce their annual financial report!
Basic Font Categories
Fonts can be categorized in a few ways. These are the most popular categories. To help you learn to “hear their voices” I also listed a few characteristics usually associated with them.
- Sans Serif – modern, natural, minimalistic, easy to read online,
- Serif – classic, formal, easy to read in print,
- Slab Serif – masculine, confident, vintage,
- Script – feminine, elegant, personal,
- Display – distinctive, strong, ornamental,
- Handwriting – casual, natural, imperfect
These categories should help you choose a font that will:
- harmonize with your business profile
- appeal to your audience
- look good with each other.
How Many Fonts Does A Brand Need?
This is one of the cases where less is more. But still, you need to plan for all the places where your typefaces will be used.
- Headline: a typeface that stands out – for all main titles. Choose something bold, but easy to read. Not too wide, so the titles would fit when space is limited like on business cards or social media banners
- Subtitles: This typeface should break your text into easier to “chew” sections. It needs to stand out and be clear for all who just want to quickly browse through the content and check if it is worth reading
- Body Copy: One that is very legible, even when small. It will appear in all paragraphs of your writing, and, if applicable, even on merchandise packaging. It should not distract the audience from the content, so choose something simple.
Sometimes you can add another font that is unique and decorative. But use it sparingly, just for highlights, accents, and special displays.
QUICK TIP: If your logo requires text – that is often a call for an additional font. You should not use your logo’s font in any other text, even the headlines. The logo should not be confused with anything else.
Text and Font Hierarchy
The hierarchy of fonts is typically organized as H1, H2, and so on down to paragraphs (p), and serves the purpose of structuring and visually prioritizing content. H1 tags are usually reserved for the main page title, representing the highest level of importance, while H2 tags subheadings beneath the main title.
The paragraph’s subheadings use H3, H4, and so forth. Finally, paragraph (p) tags are employed for regular body copy text.
NOTE: In addition to your human readers, all documents online will be browsed by search engines and AI. And just like the human eye, the engines will check for the headlines first. Therefore, make sure to not only tag your headlines diligently but also load them with related keywords.
Pairing Fonts
It is not easy to select multiple fonts that match your brand and look good with each other. For inspiration, I recommend using applications that help with this pairing process like Fonts in Use or Font Joy.
Fonts in Use gives you actual, real-life examples of how typefaces are paired. If you have one font you already like, type in its name and it will show you different designs and fonts that this font is used with. With Font Joy you start in the same way, but instead of showing examples it generates ideas for a style sheet including the 3 basic typefaces you need: headline, subtitles, and body copy.
Font Families
There is a shortcut to the font pairing process: choose a font with a “big family”. It means that within the same typeface, you have multiple options like light, medium, bold, black, regular, or italic. They can be used to create a complete style sheet that covers every need of your brand. You can select a black style for your headline, bold for the subtitles, regular for paragraphs, and create a hierarchy, desirable contrast, and uniformity within the whole set.
This method offers several advantages:
- Always maintains a cohesive visual identity.
- Works well with responsive design: fonts from the same family behave in the same way when switching between displays on a big screen, tablet, or phone.
- Saves time by eliminating the search for multiple typefaces’ licensing.
Fonts Have End Users License Agreements.
Depending on where you plan to use the font, you may need a license. These are the most common usages:
- Free for personal use
You can use the font for personal projects without paying for it. Using them for business purposes may require a separate, paid-for, license. - Commercial use
You need to purchase a license to use this font for business or commercial projects. The license will allow you to use the font in products, advertisements, or any other commercial context. - Freeware
The font is free to use, but there might be restrictions on its usage. It’s important to check the specific terms provided by the front’s creator. - Shareware
You can use the font for free during a trial period. To continue using it beyond the trial, you usually need to purchase a license. - Open source
The font’s source is open and accessible to the public. You can use, modify, and distribute the font freely, sometimes with certain conditions.
To put it simply personal use is when you make something you don’t plan to sell. Examples of personal use include your website, t-shirts for a family reunion, a resume, or your garage sale sign. Commercial use is when you are working with the intent of making money. All kinds of business products, like business cards, brochures, websites, and more, need to be licensed.
Make sure you comply with the licensing requirements and use all fonts appropriately. You can find the license rules in the EULA (End Users License Agreement) that should be attached to every font you purchase and download.
Google Fonts Are Very Convenient
It is a pain when you find on some platform a font that you really like, only to discover that it is not part of the design software or web builder you use. Even if you have the skill to upload it – it may not work as well as you want it to. That is why I like to look for new typefaces on Google Fonts. All typefaces you find there are very lenient:
- They work well across different devices and platforms
- Used online they load fast because they’re hosted on Google’s servers
- Google fonts render well for responsive design
- They are free for personal and commercial use
So, for a quick escape from the font-finding frustration, consider reaching out to Google Fonts for a font family that will cover all the styles your brand needs.
After all, no matter how much, the fonts would love to talk – they only need to say enough to represent your brand, and not overwhelm it with a cacophony of their many voices.
Fonts need to be your ambassadors, not the competition to your message.