Typefaces: Picking the Right Font

So you’ve chosen your company colors, you’ve got your logo, graphics, and imagery, but what about fonts?

The typeface that a company uses for it’s stationery, brochures, websites, etc. is just as important as other elements that we’ve recently discussed. Picking the right font can make your company stand out, look bright, professional, and forward-thinking, and feel modern and stylish. Choosing the wrong font can make your company look old-fashioned, leave your brochure and website content illegible, and can present an unprofessional face to the business.

Typography

The study of fonts and font usage is known as Typography, and it is a vast and varied field of study. In this article, we’ll only scratch the surface of this topic, but we will include links to some useful resources and tools at the end. To start with, here are a few typographic terms that you should be familiar with before you start browsing and choosing fonts for use in your branding and design.

Serif Fonts

Serif fonts are those that have a small line and/or stroke at the end of their main stroke, such as Times New Roman, Garamond, or Georgia are examples of serif fonts. Serif fonts are perfect for the text in books and magazines since the nature of the serif design makes each letter more recognizable and therefore easier to read in large blocks.

Here are some examples:

San Serif Fonts

San Serif fonts are those that do not have lines and strokes at the end of their main strokes, such as Helvetica, Arial, and Futura. San Serif fonts are better sued for titling, headings, punchy, short text blocks, and sub text, rather than main text areas.

Script Fonts

Script fonts, also called Cursive or handwritten fonts, tend to be more ornate and elegant, and are based upon the natural flow of a handwritten letter. Script fonts are generally used for short titles, greetings cards, invitations, etc. Never use script fonts for body text or lengthy copy since they will become illegible quickly.

Font Families and Styles

Font families are groups of fonts that use the same design, but have different styles, such as regular, bold, italic, and bold italic. Font styles can help add character and flavor to your text, such as adding emphasis or description.

Font Sizes

For printed material, font sizes are typically measured in Points, 12-point being the most common. Point sizing is based upon an inch, and there are 72 points to an inch. Another font measurement is the Pica; there are 12 points to a pica, and 6 picas to an inch. Check out this Wikipedia page for some history on points and picas.

For online use, fonts can be measured in points, however, this is a static size and this sizing method won’t proportion properly on-screen, so it’s better to use pixels. Pixels or Ems (1 Em = 16 pixels) are responsive sizes, meaning that they will scale in relation to the size of the screen. 16 pixels is a good size for on-screen text.

The Right Font for the Right purpose

As we said at the beginning of the post, choosing the right font is an important part of your overall design and image, since it can make-or-break the impact and legibility of your website, brochure, or posters. Below, we’ll offer a few guidelines for selecting the right fonts for the job.

Conveying Emotion

Different fonts convey different emotions. They can be playful, casual, business-like, professional, high-tech, traditional, clean, messy, or elegant. In addition, San Serifs can be seen as being strong, modern and clean. Serifs tend to portray traditional and reliable values. Script fonts often lend a feminine, graceful, or romantic feel to the text.

Legibility

There are some situations where you need to be really careful with font choice. Here are some examples:

• Using fine serif fonts on a dark background may make the text hard to read, especially online or at a small size.
• Some intricate or highly-compacted fonts become easily illegible when used for text blocks. this type of ornate font is usually only used for short titles or emphasis.
• Extended or compressed fonts of any style can become illegible if over extended or compressed
• Body text composed of bold and/or capitalized fonts can be very difficult to read.

Use Contrasting Fonts

For your company font styles, try using just two font families – one for titling and the other for body text. but it’s important to use complimentary fonts in your combinations, so start by using one of the font combination tools listed below.

Don’t Use Similar Fonts

Finally, try not to use two font families that are too similar in style together. They will look slightly off – as if you’ve made an error – rather than work as a complimentary pair. Again, using one of the tools below will help to prevent this.

Need Font or Typography Help?

Thanks for reading this post. We appreciate that we only covered a few basics, but we hope we’ve given you enough knowledge for you to start thinking about your company font styles, and how typography can be used in your branding.

To get your started, try these useful online tools for help choosing the right fonts:

• Font Matcherator: identify fonts by uploading an image
• Font Combinations: combine and compare fonts
• FontJoy: another font combination generator
• Typotheque: browse and select fonts; also has a font combination generator

And if you need more advice with your fonts, talk to us and we’ll be happy to help!