Reading font licenses can be a little tedious, but it’s something you’ll want to do to avoid legal trouble sometime down the line. Take inspiration from other things that have typography similar to the kind you want to have for your own project. You could create a mood board with the Same Energy visual search engine, or make use of a site like Pinterest. A good rule of thumb is to assign different font faces, sizes, and typographical emphasis (e.g. bold, italic, etc.) to different elements or purposes.
Choosing font combinations is both an art and a science and takes a fair amount of experimentation and practice for designers to master. Another consideration is that if multiple designers are working on a single project, they might each need a licensed version of the font. Designers should be sure they understand the licensing of any fonts they’re considering using and what limitations those licenses might impose. Fonts that are perfect for use on the web might not translate well to use in print, and vice versa.
Free vs. Paid Fonts: Which One is Right for You?
And depending on the type of Serif, they can come across as corporate. There are other Serifs that can transmit an elegant flair or a quirky personality. Serif fonts are greatest body copy because they are extremely legible. You can use them on newspapers, magazines, or anywhere with long form copy. Next we have Sans Serif and these don’t have the little feet that Serifs have, so therefore they look clean, minimalistic, contemporary and sleek.
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The Ultimate Guide to Choosing Your Brand Fonts
That’s why iit’s important to have a clear understanding of what you want to achieve with your font choice, as well as who you’re trying to appeal to. Whatever your brief, ensure you’re clear on what your font needs to achieve, how it will be used, or what specific problem it choosing fonts for website needs to solve. Choosing the right fonts is a lot like adding color to a project that was outlined in black and white – the personality and style finally gets to shine through. If you want to design something with a trendier flair, consider pairing typefaces in a modern way.
The scope of the project or projects in which a font will be used is one of the first things designers should consider when choosing a typeface. A font that will only be used for a limited scope, such as a slide deck, will need to be less flexible than one that will be used across a brand’s entire visual presence. An important part of the design process is research and inspiration. One of my favorite places to find design inspiration is on Pinterest. Let’s say I’m working on designing a poster to advertise an event.
Sans serif typefaces
One of the most well-known serif typefaces and probably the first font you ever used on a computer is Times New Roman. Depending on the project, it might be a priority for your font to have matching Arabic, Greek, or Hebrew characters. You can also find web fonts to support a range of Hindic scripts like Bengali, Devanagari, Gujarati, and Tamil, as well as Southeast Asian languages like Thai.
To make your target audience feel more personal with your brand, include script in your brand fonts. Script fonts are handwritten in nature and a lot fancier than the serifs. They dispense with the blocky print look, making it a natural-looking cursive font. Due to their handwritten, stroke-like style, script fonts provoke ideas of creativity, elegance, freedom and femininity. While breaking design rules can result in some incredibly creative outcomes, it’s important to do so with intention.
Large Font Families
Whether you choose sans serif or handwritten fonts, your brand fonts will become part of your brand’s visual identity. Alternatively, use two different fonts with some commonalities in each other. For example, serif fonts have small edges on the ends of every character, while sans serifs don’t.
Indeed, Lil Grotesk has a pristine look that’s very easy to read. This sans serif font was specifically designed to enhance readability for people with learning disabilities. Larger dots on the “i”s, extended ascenders and longer tails are just a few of the unique characteristics that make this font ideal for enhancing web accessibility. The Barlow sans serif font is clean and low-contrast, making it effortlessly readable. The typeface designer looked to California license plates and highway signs for inspiration. Composed of only capital letters, this attention-grabbing font makes a bold statement.
Type Classification and Type Families3 lessons, 15:13
Stylish fonts can add personality, set the mood and help you show off your brand’s creative side. However, these fonts can create visual clutter and chaos when used as subtitles or body text, making things difficult to read. Script fonts add a lot of visual interest to brand personality due to their elegant, creative and intuitive look.
- Experimentation and practice are both important to mastering typeface selection.
- These can be illegible for anything longer than just a small paragraph.
- While they are both the same category of type, they vary in contrast due to their width.
- 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.
And these two can be in a wide spectrum, anything from casual to formal depending on their form. These can be illegible for anything longer than just a small paragraph. That’s why they’re used in wedding invitations, elegant menus or personal notes. Anything that doesn’t fit in one of the groups above will fit here. Their forms can be very specific to a genre, time period or style.
Readability and legibility can both be impacted dramatically by the size of the font being used. A font that looks great at 18 pixels might be illegible at 10 pixels. That’s not necessarily a deal-breaker unless the designer knows the font will need to be used at smaller sizes. Whether that mood is formal or informal, fun or serious, modern or classic, or something else entirely. There are many fonts online that are available for commercial use (for projects that turn a profit), but even more that can only be used for personal use.
