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Branding 101 What Fonts Fit Your Brand?
Choosing a brand font is not a quick decision to make to have something to check off the list. Fonts speak about a brand on every asset and piece of collateral. Did you know that people will form an opinion on the visual alone before ever looking at the brand’s content? Not only is it important to choose the font that speaks for your brand it needs to appeal to your target audience. Here is a guide on how to choose a font, what they mean, and what they say.
Steps to Choosing Your Fonts and Branding
When building your brand identity, there are many visual choices that you must choose from logo, colors, images, and fonts.
Fonts help tell your brands story and are within the logo, so choosing the fonts typically comes first. Fonts also help with the design layout, giving the readers cues and shortcuts within the navigation.
What Should a Brand Font Should Do?
The basics of a brand font is that it should be legible, work on all platforms, and communicate the brand’s personality. The fonts will be used on the website and all marketing assets.
Fonts have personalities and set a tone by the way that they look and can evoke emotions in people. So, it is important to take the font seriously when you are making your branding choices.
Brand Personality and Your Font Style
Before choosing fonts and other branding details, it is important to think about the top 3 adjectives that define your brand. These adjectives will help when choosing font categories that best give the same impression.
Six Basic Branding Font Groups
Font Categories are groupings that help designers choose the best fonts for a brand. There are six major font groups that have several font options. Each group evokes a tone when looked at.
- Classic and Traditional.
- Popular serif fonts are
- Two popular brand examples of this group are Vogue and Time.
- Modern and Minimal.
- Sans-serif fonts are:
- Facebook, Netflix, and Google are brands that fall into this category.
- Bold and Eccentric.
- Examples of slab serif fonts are
- Two well-known brands that use this style are Sony and Honda.
- Elegant and Unique.
- Examples of brands that use script are Instagram and Cadillac.
- Informal and Artistic.
- Fonts that are considered handwritten are:
- Stylized and Distinctive.
- Popular fonts are:
A great starting point to view the lists and visual examples is at Typewolf. It can be overwhelming to look at the list and have a strong idea of the style and, more importantly, what each font
looks like.
Choose Your Main Font
The main font is used in the headers and in the logo. This one will be the most impactful font in your brand. It is the font style that best represents what your brand stands for and the voice.
Supporting Fonts
When choosing the supporting fonts, you will want to keep to two or three, depending on how your main font will be used. The supporting fonts should complement the main font, look at them all together for cohesiveness.
A great place to test out your fonts together is FontPair. There are so many combinations that is easy to be unsure until you see them together.
Font Styling
Styling your fonts is about deciding will they be italicized, bold, or all caps. If you are styling the fonts, you want to do it strategically and consistently.
Bold
The most common styling is using the bold feature. This is normally used for headers, especially if you have different sizes of headers, bold is an easy way to distinguish one from one another.
Italics
Italicizing is typically done to highlight small text or short blocks of content, like details under content.
ALL CAPS
There are some common rules when choosing to use all caps. Never use it in your body font or for large sections of text. Headers, logos, and taglines are the best place for all caps styling. The biggest reason you want to avoid
Point size
The length of content often times will help determine the font that you select. Some fonts are not as legible in smaller sizes. Once you decide on the fonts, look at them in a variety of sizes to determine overall what is best.
Style Guide Cheat Sheet
Once you decide on the font combinations, styling, point size, and headers, you will want to detail the specifics in the style guide cheat sheet. This sheet should also have the color guide, and logo variations for your brand. This easily accessible guide is a necessity when it comes to creating consistency for your collateral and assets. The guide will help when you hire an outside source and for in-house employees to ensure the brand’s voice and look are always intact.
Consider All the Combinations and Options
When choosing your brand fonts remember that you will most likely keep them for many years, so you want to make choices that really speak to your personality and give the best impressions. Think about your website, blog, packaging, what looks best for the logo. As any designer will say, consider several options until you find the best one.
The team at GoMcIntyre can help you find the best combination for your brand if you are stuck. They have helped tons of clients through the process and are ready to help your brand personality shine through.
