Brands have evolved to stay relevant through product innovation, advertisement campaigns, and digital marketing strategies. However, they must develop professional brand font combinations regardless of what case they prioritize. A brand font creates an identity for the organization and builds a communication channel with a loyal audience.
However, many brand websites worldwide have faced challenges with increased competition. One of the challenges starters have to deal with is choosing the right font combinations. In many industries, individuals use brand fonts that bring calmness and optimism. Even when we talk about Monotypes, there is a huge appraisal of the influence of broad labels.
In the digital world today, you can see fonts and typography all the time. Ironically, you see them on your computer/mobile screen. Being a business owner is all about understanding the uses of different fonts and their preference for different business purposes.
What is Serif Fonts?
Serif fonts are the ones that have an extra stroke at the end of their letterforms. Brand fonts with this typeface generate feelings of history, tradition, and integrity. Fonts in the serif category have different shapes, thicknesses, and lengths. Here are some of the different types of serif fonts:
- Old style: These serifs have wedged ascenders and high contrasts between thick and thin strokes in the letterforms. It is the most traditional and classic version of all the serif styles.
- Transitional: They have a bigger contrast between stroke thickness and wider serifs evolved from the old-style serif typeface. Times New Roman is an example of a transitional font choice and is commonly used for plain text reading because it makes economical use of space.
- Slab Serif: Slab serif fonts are distinguished by the thick serifs, occasionally as thick as the letter strokes. Courier, Excelsior, and Rockwell are some examples of slab serif fonts.
What are Sans-Serif Fonts?
Sans-serif fonts don't have serifs at the end of their letterforms. They are more modern than serif fonts and are known for their high legibility. In addition, these typefaces usually have a cleaner and more orderly appearance. Here are some of the sans-serif fonts to choose from:
- Grotesque: These brand fonts don't vary much in stroke width, and uppercase letters have a relatively simple appearance.
- Geometric: They contain letterforms that are influenced by geometric shapes and have a modern look.
- Humanist: These brand fonts are inspired by traditional letterforms, forming a hybrid of thin and thick strokes. Letter spacing, wide counters, and a large x-height characterize this typeface. It makes it easy for the viewers to understand the small text.
How to Choose a Font for Your Brand?
The brand font is an essential part of your brand personality. When you choose the right font for your brand or design project, you must consider the following factors:
- Understand your brand identity: Before you choose a font, you must understand your brand identity that nonverbally displays your company's tone. You can start by brainstorming a few words that describe your brand identity. For example, if your niche is education, you must choose a traditional serif typeface. Similarly, you can go for a script font if you are quirky. If you are modern, you must choose a sans-serif font.
Image taken from Strikingly User’s Website
- Look into the brand fonts that you admire: If you own a business for the first time, likely, you will need to come up with the right brand font combinations right away. Therefore, it is important to analyze competitors and identify your field's most successful brand fonts. It would help if you took note of their typeface branding and how it communicates the message to the target audience. You can combine the quirkiness of one typeface with the modernism of another typeface.
- Study typography: Being a website owner, you must study the anatomy of letterforms. It would help if you learned to differentiate between different fonts and how different styles generate particular feelings. All of this information will help you make the final decision on your brand font.
- Ensure that you choose a versatile font: Your chosen font must maintain consistency across your branding, from your advertisement campaigns to your desktop web designs and mobile interfaces. If your brand logo contains a phrase, ensure that you consider something highly legible. If you want your brand to be on the billboards or signage, you must come up with a font combination that is bold but legible.
- Choose a few fonts to start: If you have made choices regarding your preferred brand font, narrow them down to three and compare how your brand text looks in each of them. You can look at them individually and also side by side.
- Visualize typographic hierarchy: A typographic hierarchy refers to how the typefaces are displayed and how they can catch the viewer's attention effectively. If you are choosing a few brand fonts, make sure that you visualize how they look together. You must ensure that the typeface of your headers complements your subheaders and vice versa. You must select what lettering should represent your display font style and what should be part of the body text. You can also swap your styles to see what lettering has the best structural layout.
Image taken from Strikingly User’s Website
- Styling: Once you have chosen your fonts and studied the typographic hierarchy, you must understand how to style them properly. Styling refers to how you use your fonts. For example, your font can be bold, italicized, underlined, or in all caps. You would know about styling if you have used Microsoft Word or Google Docs files. However, when discussing branding strategies, you must style them strategically.
- Legible brand fonts: Brand fonts are established to add personality to your overall brand. They make the brand text look visually appealing while delivering the main message that attracts your target audience. Legible fonts ensure that the audience understands your brand text at a glance.
- Ask for feedback: When you have identified your brand font combinations, it is always good to ask your family and friends about them and their feedback. As your branding strategies target an audience, it is always a good habit to get an honest assessment of your brand from the people you trust.
The Forbidden Fonts
Everyone has their preference for brand fonts, but specific fonts result in a bad reputation. Some fonts are considered unprofessional and widely viewed as plain terrible. Therefore, we recommend you leave them as part of your brand management strategy. Here are some fonts you must ignore at all costs:
- Comic Sans: Since it has a childish and unprofessional appearance, you shouldn't include it as part of your company's branding. Not even comic book companies
- Papyrus: This font is famously known for its use in James Cameron's Avatar, where it received negative feedback.
- Hobo: Just like Comic Sans, Hobo has a childish appearance. Many companies only use this font to invoke fun in children. Being a website owner, you must know that you cannot compensate for your professionalism, even if you belong to the field of daycare.
Set Your Brand Fonts on Strikingly
When establishing a brand for your business, you must choose a font that looks attractive to the public eye. Therefore, you should consider whether they fit your company's profile before choosing brand fonts.
Image taken from Strikingly
Strikingly is a professional website builder that has established the best brands in the world. After registering a free account on our platform, you can build your website and create your online presence with a unique brand. In addition, Strikingly allows you to upload your custom font when you design your website. This is a great feature on Strikingly because it helps you to elevate your branding strategies, as typography is an extension of your brand.
If you are building a brand website for the first time, you can check out some of the greatest brand websites made on our platform. Then, you can get the notebook out and note down everything that makes a brand website successful.
Image taken from Strikingly
To upload a custom font on your Strikingly website, you must check out the following steps:
- Click the 'Styles' button on your Strikingly website editor
- Choose 'Fonts' and select the text that you want to change
- Click "Upload Custom Font" on your Strikingly website editor
- Include the custom font by uploading the font file from your computer. Strikingly supports ttf, otf, woff, and woff2 file types.
Remember that you can upload 25 custom fonts from your account. If you have reached the limit and want to upload new brand fonts, you must delete the previous ones. If you decide to cancel your account, all of your uploaded custom fonts will return to the theme's default font.
Image taken from Strikingly
Additionally, Strikingly also lets you integrate Google fonts into your website. Our Google font integration helps you to access different Google fonts from the entire Google collection. This integration allows greater design flexibility without writing a single line of code.
Conclusion
When we talk about fonts and typography, there are many rules and regulations for you to follow. However, once you start using them, you will realize that everything comes to building the right font combinations and giving them a professional look. Like many other aspects of your brand, it is about choosing a brand font suitable for your company.
Identifying the right brand fonts will ensure that your customers perceive your brand the way you want them to. Whether you choose san serif or handwritten fonts, your font will become part of your brand identity.
