How to Pick a Font That Suits Your Brand: Guide to Choosing Fonts
Branding is an essential element of marketing to promote any business. It helps establish a unique brand identity for your company and is a fantastic way to differentiate your business from competitors by giving it a distinct and memorable image.
In this regard, the font you choose for your business can have a huge impact on your brand image. But how to pick a font that suits your brand? Depending on your brand aesthetic, picking the right font is important for increasing brand recall and ensuring that all written business communication is legible and works on different platforms.
Keep reading if you’re considering launching your own business and need some help figuring out the best font for your brand.
Know Your Fonts
Whether you’re in search of the best Instagram fonts to make your account more appealing, or the ideal business website fonts, it is essential to acquaint yourself with what’s out there. Below we list the basic font categories and provide relevant examples of businesses that have adopted them.
Serif Fonts
Serif fonts have the characteristic stroke in their letterforms and are easily the most commonly recognizable typeface. It is a classic choice for businesses that wish to give off a respectable and traditional vibe. Examples of serif fonts include Times New Roman, EB Garamond, and Baskerville. Some brands that use serif fonts include Times magazine, Vogue, and Tiffany and Co.
Sans-Serif Fonts
In contrast with serif fonts, sans-serif is characterized by a minimal, modern, and clean aesthetic. The most common types of sans-serif fonts are Arial, Roboto, and Helvetica. Famous brands that use sans-serif fonts include Netflix, Facebook, Google, and Spotify.
Slab Serif Fonts
Slab serif is an interaction of serif fonts that are defined by a confident and often quirky aesthetic and feature serifs that are bold. Popular slab serif fonts include Roboto Slab, Courier New, and Rockwell. Brands such as Sony, Volvo, and Honda use slab serif fonts.
Script Fonts
Script fonts mimic elegantly written cursive writing and have the advantage of being unique. Some common examples include Lucida Script, Allura, and Dancing Script. The most popular brands that use script fonts include Instagram, Ford, and Johnson & Johnson.
Decorative Fonts
As one of the most diverse types of fonts, decorative fonts include distinctive shapes and forms that resonate with the business brand. Some examples include Fredericka, Lobster Two, and Bangers. Multinational businesses that have successfully used decorative fonts include Disney, Lego, and IBM.
Handwritten Fonts
As the name suggests, these resemble handwritten scripts and can be a great choice for brands that want to give off a casual and playful feel. Examples include Patrick Hand, Permanent Marker, and Amatic SC. Handwritten fonts are usually used by local businesses, such as coffee shops and clothing stores.
Align the Font to Your Brand Identity
It’s important to assess your brand’s personality to unpack what it stands for and what you want to communicate to your consumers.
A great starting exercise can be to brainstorm some keywords that resonate with your brand and ideally involve your executive team in the process. You can map these out and then compare which font most suits your business’s brand identity. For instance, if you are launching a business for bespoke and avant-garde handbags, you may want to consider using something modern such as sans-serif fonts.
Be sure to explore the numerous types of fonts within each of the above-mentioned categories since there is likely to be a great degree of variation among them.
Consider the Typographic Hierarchy
How to pick a font that suits your brand? When choosing a font, you need to ensure that it is versatile and can be optimized across your marketing communication channels, such as billboards and posters or desktop or mobile interfaces.
This means paying attention to the typographic hierarchy, which involves choosing the right combination of fonts and calibrating the font size and text layout for viewers. An important aspect is to ensure that the different fonts you pick, such as those for the heading, sub-headings, and body of the text, flow well together.
For example, if you choose a serif font such as Abril Fatface for the heading, you can pair it with a subtle sans-serif font like Montserrat for an elegant and contemporary vibe. You can also adopt a single font and vary the size, capitalization, and boldness to create synchrony and convey the brand’s trustworthiness.
Conclusion
How to pick a font that suits your brand? Choosing the right font for your business can highlight the personality and identity of your brand. It’s the gateway that allows consumers to familiarize themselves with your business and can play an instrumental role in marketing your product or services. So ensure that you carefully align the font type to your brand ethos to convey a strong impression to your prospects.
