By: AllieWalters
June 4, 2020
This “how to choose your brand fonts” short course, gives you the tips and tricks to choose the best brand fonts to represent your business. Choosing the right fonts for your new brand or campaign can be a bit of a mind field. There are many fonts out there but we’ll provide you with the tools to help you through this process. And don’t forget that any professional designer will help you with this too.
Important font considerations
There are a number of things to consider when choosing your fonts.
We’ve provided more practical information on choosing these below.
Font trends 2020
During the last decade the trend has been to use sans serif fonts for both header and body fonts as they are largely deemed easier to read and are more modern looking. However, more recently, there has been a shift to using a mixture of serif and non serif fonts. If you see some fonts being used well on example websites, you can easily check which font families they are using. This is useful to use as research for possible font styles for your new brand and website.
Here’s how to check fonts on website’s you like:
Case study: mailchimp
Take a look at Mailchimp’s new brand style. They use the following font families: Cooper, Georgia, Times, Times New Roman, serif.
Note that they have paired the use of serif fonts (Times, Times New Roman) and non serif fonts (Georgia). This gives character to headers and easy legibility to body text.
Font styles
There are two types of font styles available and these are referred to as serif and sans serif fonts. Serif fonts have small lines at the ends of characters, such as Times Roman, Courier and Palatino. Sans serif fonts don’t have the lines at the end of characters and are usually plainer looking such as Helvetica, Arial and Open Sans.
[put screen shots of all fonts]
During the last decade the trend has been to use sans serif fonts for both header and body fonts as they are largely deemed easier to read and are more modern looking. However, more recently, there has been a shift to using a mixture of serif and non serif fonts.
Sans serif font examples
You can search easily for Sans Serif fonts using the Google search
Serif font examples
You can search easily for Serif fonts using the Google search
Brand personality
As with choosing a suitable brand colour, you will need to think about which fonts represent your brand values and market. For example if you are a high end luxury brand you wouldn’t want to choose a handwritten style font and conversely if you are a children’s nursery, you probably wouldn’t want to choose a formal looking font.
Font suitability for all platforms
In today’s world, you need to ensure that the fonts you choose for your new brand are suitable for both print and digital platforms. You don’t want to choose fonts that are only suitable for print and vice versa. The Google fonts website is a great place to choose easy to access fonts that are widely available across all platforms and free to use.
When choosing your fonts, it’s worth pointing out that you will need the following formats to cover both your print and digital designs and that there are some slight differences between the two versions.
For print and desktop
Desktop fonts are designed to be used on programmes such as Microsoft Word and the Adobe suite. These fonts are not always optimised for digital use although in most cases you should be able to find the equivalent download kit which includes a web safe font.For digital/web use
Know the Differences. Desktop fonts are designed to be used with desktop programs such as MS Word and Adobe Photoshop and are optimised for print. These fonts are not optimised for web use, though in most cases, downloadable font kits will include a web-ready font along with your desktop font.
For more technical information on font types
https://www.fonts.com/support/faq/font-formats
For general information on font use
https://www.creativebloq.com/how-to/choose-the-right-typeface-for-a-brand
https://99designs.co.uk/blog/tips/brand-fonts/
Great places to find fonts
https://fonts.google.com/https://www.fonts.com
https://www.behance.net/search?search=free%2Bfont
This is the fun bit. There’s lots of inspiration out there and we’ve added ours to the mix with our blog on font inspiration. You can also use this website to fontpair get inspiration on fonts that look great together.
Font licenses
You can find many fonts for free, such as on Google fonts but some have stringent licenses and usage terms attached. Take the time to research the licensing and usage of any font you buy and double check that you can get formats suitable for use on both web and print platforms.
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